Slashback: TIPS, FatWallet, MPlayer

Slashback with words on the demise of TIPS, MPlayer's newest add-in, Revolution OS on DVD, Wal-Mart blinking first in their fight with FatWallet, and more. Read on for the details.

Facts is facts, Ma'am. joebeone writes "WalMart has backed down [AScribe.org] from it's DMCA claim in the FatWallet case[1] after FatWallet countered that facts are uncopyrightable (at least in the US). Let this be a lesson to those who would use the DMCA to unjustly intimidate websites into removing content. I definitely think that Boalt Hall's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic deserves some major credit for sticking up for the little guys who don't have the litigatory resources that companies like WalMart have.

[1] WalMart claimed that their day-after-thanksgiving sale prices were copyrightable."

Maybe they just changed the drop location. An anonymous reader writes "There was one small ray of light in the Homeland Security Act. A provision inserted in the bill killed the Justice Department's TIPS initiative. You'll recall that TIPS was the DoJ's proposal to create a domestic spy network using ordinary citizens. And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear. Oh well ..."

Best way to play back "L.A. Confidential." An anonymous reader writes "The best media player for *nixes, MPlayer, has just gotten better with the ability to play Windows Media Player 9 (WMV9 and WMA9) files. When Sorensen playback was added the only remaining codecs were the Window Media Player ones. Now that this is complete, Linux finally seems to have a complete solution for multimedia playback. It just remains for the mainstream distros to include this gem."

Measure three or four times at least, cut once. jdevons writes "The Owner-Builder Book that I reviewed a while ago has been updated. The author reads slashdot regularly and included many of the ideas and suggestions offered in the slashdot comments ..."

Jeff, Rob and Chris in their Hollywood makeup. updog writes "The film Revolution OS, which has been discussed on Slashdot here and here, is now available on DVD at Netflix (btw, it's interesting to note that this Netflix version is sub-licensed under the guise of pay-per-view television, and the director J.T.S. Moore wasn't even aware of its existence until recently.)

A 2 Disc Special Edition DVD will be available in January 2003, and will include additional interviews, bonus material, and better video quality over the Netflix version. You can make sure that you're notified when it's released by requesting info here. Finally, I've written a review of the Netflix version of the DVD, which you can read here."

Next year's stocking stuffer, maybe? An anonymous reader writes "nvmax.com is running a story/press release explaining how Dynamism.com is teaming up with the Zaurus Open Source development community to bring the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 to English!. I need to get one!"

What I want is C-64 style Aztec. retro128 writes "For all of your old schoolers out there, Tierra Entertainment has released a re-make of King's Quest II, which includes original art, completely redone music, and a few extra things not seen in the original game (some early screen shots hinted at a town, which did not exist in the original). What's remarkable is that Tierra has no affiliation with Sierra whatsoever, and is driven by two developers who wish to remain anonymous. I've played their re-make of KQ1 and it's up to snuff. Check out the main page or go straight to the good stuff."

Comments

Who needs TIPS

[dynayellow]

When we've got the Total Awareness Network. Let the computers do the work!

Man, remember when we were worried about Carnivore?

Re:Who needs TIPS

[Tackhead]

> When we've got the Total Awareness Network. Let the computers do the work!
>
> Man, remember when we were worried about Carnivore?

Da, comrade. In Soviet Russia, umm, they watched KGB?

Re:Who needs TIPS

[Anthony Boyd]

Man, remember when we were worried about Carnivore?

Yeah. Good times, good times.

Re:Who needs TIPS

[dubious9]

No, no, no, comrade. In Soviet Russia, government fears YOU!

Re:Who needs TIPS

[mcmonkey]

What we really need is the Total Information Tracking System program. Yeah, what this country needs is more TITS. And redundant systems to be on the safe side--we should have 2 TITS side-by-side.

I always feel much better when I'm facing 2 TITS.

<ob Smirnoff>In Soviet Russia the tits suck you!

MPlayer

[SquierStrat]

I'll disagree about MPlayer. MPlayer is a little more fully featured, but I prefer Xine especially for DVD playing. Mplayer has given me nothing but performance fits and well, I don't exactly have a slow machine shall we say? :-) Not to mention the DVD menu support in MPlayer is not quite up to par from what the docs say.

find xine at http://xine.sourceforge.net

Re:MPlayer

[gid]

I use mplayer just fine on my little pos 1 ghz celery with a dvd drive and a pro savage 4 chipset. It's just a matter of tweaking settings.

The machine is a Shuttle Spacewalker SV24. MPlayer performance can vary greatly on what X output driver you're using, I think I was using the xv drive. Also if you're playing from a cdrom, you'll want to add something like cache=8192 to your config file.

Actually I haven't used that machine in quite some time, it's currently collecting dust for me in my room. :)

What I really want in mplayer now is variable slomotion and frame by frame stuff.

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

MPlayer rocks!

$HOME/.mplayer/config

vo=sdl
ao=sdl

Works great!!! =D

I think the X drivers (xv and x11) are rather slow for some odd reason...
gl or gl2 also works great for me.
The gui is coming along nicely as well ;)

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

The developers are not against binary distributions, of a GPLed mplayer. Very old versions of mplayer were not GPL-compatible at all. Now it is. You can even get MPlayer with SuSE 8.1 (however slightly broken)

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tried Xine, and I must say, I find it rather buggy, quite ugly, user-unfriendly and slow to pick up new features. A good alternative is mPlayer, which supports many modern media formats, handles DVDs better, and makes regular releases with new features. But as always, try for yourself ;-)

xine: http://xine.sourceforge.net/
mplayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/

Re:MPlayer

[rendler]

Define 'buggy'. Over the last year I have had almost zero problems with using it, apart from the fact that it wouldn't play some unsupported file formats. And the only time when I've had it stop playing things on me is when the actual file was corrupted or not encoded properly.

On a side note I actually got to finally watch the Ellen Feiss ad last week to see what all the fuss was all about. But since I'm using a 166Mhz it was a bit slow, so I just used mencoder to transform the quicktime file into divx5. Got almost double the frames while viewing and no noticeable quality loss. Oh yea and smaller file size as well.

Re:MPlayer

[goat_of_wisdom]

I'm grateful someone took the time to write a media player for Linux like MPlayer -- but as a new/intermediate Linux user, I must say I find it a bit frustrating to use. After an hour or two of reading through the documentation, I finally had it working only to break it as soon as I tried to tweak something. Now I can't get it to work at all.

On a related note, does anyone now if MPlayer can record audio from a TV tuner? I've had pretty bad luck with this so far as well.

Re:MPlayer

[MrHanky]

I agree that one should try both xine and MPlayer. However, I disagree that the latter is buggy. This is, of course, my personal opinion, based on how it works on my computer. The correct answer is: try both, see what you like best (actually xine works better on a few files here too). YMMV and all that.

The good news is that both xine and MPlayer are far better than any player I've tried on that other platform I boot into for games, although none of them have GUIs worth using. After getting used to using the arrow keys for skipping back and forth, F for full screen, etc., I must say: what the fuck do you need a GUI for in a media player anyway.

Being able to reconstruct the index of incomplete .avi's is nice too. No longer do I have to wait for the complete porn movie to download before I can skip to the juicy parts.

Re:MPlayer

[i_am_nitrogen]

The reason mplayer appears to perform more slowly in DVD playback is because it does some very aggressive deinterlacing/pulldown (based on evaulation of its video quality alone; I haven't checked the source to see what it's really doing) to 24fps, but it has a hard time syncing that 24fps output to the audio.

Most DVD menus I've tried worked in a sufficiently new MPlayer.

Re:MPlayer

[i_am_nitrogen]

I forgot to mention that, when I watched Jurassic Park on the Viewsonic LCD projector and 9' screen we have at work (late at night after hours), I almost thought I was watching a film projection, aside from the judder/jitter/whatever-the-technical-term-is caused by the postprocessing. Playing other video formats with MPlayer, like DV avi's, gives similar quality, but perfect smoothness and performance.

One odd thing about MPlayer is that the audio seems to be about 200ms off, so I have to hit kpad_plus twice every time I start a movie to get it in sync.. I don't know why it doesn't detect the audio delay and account for it.

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes mplayer can record from tv tuners - make sure that you turn recording on in your mixer though! (otherwise it won't work!)

Read the mplayer mailing list for some great tips on how do do this well :)

Best of luck with the best linux media player out there (dvd menu's blow anyhow)

have fun

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for that.

I just ordered 2 FV25 motherboards (which the spacewalker SV25 is built out of) and 2 1.0A celerys, to build hopped up media players for the kids. They'll end up in some reclaimed barbie pc cases I got for 6 bucks apiece.

Anyways, I was pretty sure they'd perform alright, and do everything I wanted 'em too (movies, light gaming - mostly emulators, some homework duties).. Your post pretty much confirms that, but I guess I'll know myself next week when they arrive.

How would you rate the TV out quality? And is it, or can be set to always use the TV out? These boxes will probably wind up with no monitors whatsoever.

And any other hardware problems with linux? I've had problems getting onboard hardware fired up in the past.

Re:MPlayer

[lunatik17]

This is either something configured wrong on your machine, or something to do with the files you're playing. I've never had this problem.

Re:MPlayer

[matusa]

This is not not true, though it was in the past. They removed this crutch months ago. It was one of the two things (the other being fully GPL) which was preventing it from being so liked by distributions... Note that if you see how they implement some codecs (for example the ones requiring you to d/l windows dlls) makes distribution issues nasty..

I like mplayer because: speed, features, supported formats, MENCODER (lets you encode arbitrary video sources--save internet streams, DVDs, etc.)

Re:MPlayer

[LinuxHam]

I have also had performance problems with MPlayer with a Thinkpad T21 p3 800. Namely, in order to play DVDs, I have to play them as root in console mode with -vo vesa. I can play DiVX in x as non-root, but never once have I been able to get the OSD to come up. I'm not convinced it even exists! ;) I'm a total n00b wrt DVD playing and ripping, and the AcidRip front-end made ripping a total breeze. I found some hdparm drive tweaking tips somewhere, and while X comes FLYING up now, the changes still weren't enough to stop the skipping. Oh, and when I try to run mplayer with -vo vesa as a non-root user on the console, I get some error about not being able to access memory.

Re:MPlayer

[Glytch]

Ogle for DVDs and MPlayer for everything else is a nice combination on my old K6-500. I've always found Xine to be too slow at both.

Yes, I know I should upgrade, but my system just plain works. When I have some catastrophic failure I'll spring for something modern.

Re:MPlayer

[Glytch]

XV output depends entirely on your videocard drivers. XV works even better than SDL on my ancient Nvidia TNT2 with Nvidia's own drivers.

Re:MPlayer

[kennyj449]

1 ghz celery is hardly a pos, except in comparison to the fastest stuff out there. Not too long ago a gigahertz of anything was considered fast.

My computer is a dual celeron 366, overclocked to 525mhz. It barely handles xine (at stock speed, it's slightly choppy and I'm about as good a tweaker as they come.)

I never got to try mplayer since the only distro I've ever used with X on this box is Mandrake and mplayer won't compile with the version of gcc that came with it, but when I finally get around to making Gentoo work I'll see how it compares.

Until then, xine is king.

Hell, it blows PowerDVD away in my equally-well-tweaked win98SE and win2k... damn impressive considering PDVD's status as the king of proprietary players and the fact that xine is running a CSS decrypter built entirely by reverse engineering.

Re:MPlayer

[SquierStrat]

Problem...i watch DVDs...I have a DXR3, I have a nice large TV and 5.1 system...i hate console dvd players...MPlayer worked very poorly in this application, and Menus don't work exactly work all that beautifully, which they are just slightly necesary to me.

Playing files it really did no better than xine for any of the formats I use. Different drivers really made no difference.

Re:MPlayer

[MrChuck]

Yeah, but it's still a Celeron. No cache to speak of, notably slower that same-clock-speed full Pentiums of same speed. notably slow.

Don't waste your money, get a full processor for Intel or AMD, not Intel's castrated little puppy dog chip.

Re:MPlayer

[Sadfsdaf]

Change your VESA settings to allow non-root. This isn't an MPlayer problem. Also, it'd be a good idea to try -vo x11 or -vo xv (xv works THE best, with translucent subtitles and all, W00T), those two drivers work much better. I think that thinkpad has a Savage card, which xvideo is supported. Try doing xvinfo in console and see if the card pops up. If not, try changing your xfree settings /w xf86cfg -textmode (?). If you get xv working, try "mplayer -vo xv -fs -ao oss -dvd 1 -slang en" which will play a DVD fullscreen with translucent english subtitiles. It should also be able to play DVDs and DIVX better since more processing is offloaded to the video card. If your DVD still skips, check if DMA is enabled on the DVD.

Re:MPlayer

[Afrosheen]

Huh, that's unusual. You must have Mandrake 8.x which came with the 'it's just fine' gcc 2.96. The Mplayer guys were talking smack about it because Redhat bundled a version with 7.x that caused alot of errors when certain things were compiled. I documented how to compile Mplayer a long time ago on Mandrakeuser.org. The trick is to use --disable-gcc-checking as a commandline switch. It's hardly a secret since the readme file AND the commandline will tell you this when you try to build it. I think there's one other switch it needs but I've since forgotten.

BTW don't waste your time unless you really feel like building it. Penguin Liberation Front (plf.zarb.org) has all the mplayer stuff you need including the codecs in rpm form. Add it as an urpmi source and urpmi mplayer, it'll download and install everything.

Re:MPlayer

[Whelkman]

Yeah, this is a long known issue with DVDs, though I don't believe anyone knows either the cause or solution other than pressing '+' twice.

This appears confined to NTSC DVDs, so the European developers can't do much about the issue.

Re:MPlayer

[pediddle]

Define 'buggy'.

I don't know if it counts as "buggy" since it is a problem with the files themselves, but Xine seems to do a much better job of recovering while playing slightly corrupted files. MPlayer (even the latest versions) loses audio sync at the slightest corruption, and even using the manual sync adjustments won't fix it (it just goes more off). Also, I have a rip of Lord of the Rings for which MPlayer actually reverses left and right audio channels!

I have complaints about Xine's UI (I complain that there is one at all and it is basically required, whereas MPlayer has better support for keybindings). I also complain that Xine has terrible granularity for fast-forwarding and rewinding (one minute vs. 5 seconds for MPlayer). Maybe this is all configurable -- I don't know.

But after all this, for playing any movies or crappy corrupted downloaded rips, I use Xine.

For short clips and anything else, MPlayer is probably better, as well as being the better package.

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the assistance. Okay, here goes ->

1. When playing DVD, I get "libdvdcss cannot open /dev/dvd for reading" when non-root even tho perms are fine. (root,disk and my non-root id is also a member of disk)

2. Any quick hints on changing the permissions of VESA?

3. xvinfo reveals Savage Streaming Engine, but when I use -vo xv, I get green garbage filling the viewing area.

4. My DVD-ROM is also CD-RW, so its mounted as /dev/scd0 and symlinked to /dev/dvd, not /dev/hdc or /dev/cdrom. hdparm refuses to work with it as scd0 so I can't check/set DMA. But it is fully tweaked on /dev/hda, which *did* help stop the skipping.

5. -slang en did nothing for but my only DVD may not have subtitles. i've also hit "o" during playback to try to bring up the on screen display.. nothing..

Therefore, I'm forced to use vo -x11 if I wish to watch non-DVD videos as a non-root user in X. And in order to watch a DVD, I have to login to non-X console as root. Which I don't object to, it's just not very pnp. Even for an RHCE. I'll gladly take hints for correcting the VESA perms and anything else you wish to volunteer :)

Thanks again for taking the time.

Re:MPlayer

[acid_zebra]

a 'little' more fully featured?

Man, MPlayer plays EVERYTHING. without fail. when another player does not perform/play, give mplayer a whirl.
I see lots of complaints in this thread that purely stem from the fact that people do not bother to RTFM.

Yes, mplayer has a gui (./configure --enable-gui )
Yes, mplayer has OSD (./configure --enable-new-conf --enable-menu)
Yes, mplayer can fix your broken indices (can't search in a avifile? mplayer -forceidx)

Audio out of sync? try the -autosync option, or use + and - during playback to adjust A/V delay.

Video slow or stuttering? USE A DIFFERENT VIDEO DRIVER! mplayer -vo help will get you a full list.

On top of all, you get the coolest encoder that can encode from any source to any format you desire.

And Yes, mplayer can be a pain in the butt.
you HAVE to read the manual. twice.
You have to play around for a while to figure out how to properly encode your movies. But after that you 1) have an appreciation of all that comes into play when encoding movies and 2) have a beautiful rip with small file size.

Do yourself a favor, grab the lastest CVS, get the win32 codecs and the quicktime dll's, grab a copy of ffmpeg (for the pretty libavcodec) and figure out how to compile this baby.

If you're into watching multimedia on linux, get this. If you want to press a button to play a DVD, and have the OS hold your hand and wipe your butt for you, you know which OS is for you.

I mean seriously, how hard is it to type
mplayer -dvd X (where X is the dvd title nr)?

Sheesh.

Re:MPlayer

[deoz]

Mplayer has given me nothing but performance fits

I think it should be noted that the current MPlayer is a pre-release. I am sure that it is above average pre-release software quality and performance.

Re:MPlayer

[dpoulson]

One thing that would make me switch from xine to mplayer to watch DVD's is an lirc plugin. I've got a headless machine under my tv to play DVD's on with a funky Packard bell remote! (Also doubles as a jukebox with ~2500 mp3s and oggs!)

Hopefully someone will point out that I'm being slow or thick and there is an lirc plugin! *8-)

Re:MPlayer

[dpoulson]

Ok, so I'll reply to myself and slap my wrists. I should've looked a bit closer!

Doh!

Re:MPlayer

[lunatik17]

After looking through the docs again I see you are right. I stand corrected. Unfortunately there is also the dependancy on proprietary, third-party codecs that could limit its usefulness when packaged officially, but its still one of the best options out there. Xine works well too, but personally I hate UIs that mimic the layout of a set-top box.

Plus Mencoder is indeed the best of the meager selection of video encoders for linux.

Re:MPlayer

[MegaFur]

After getting used to using the arrow keys for skipping back and forth, F for full screen, etc., I must say: what the fuck do you need a GUI for in a media player anyway.

Sounds like a potential vi user. :-)
Okay, to answer: the reason for the UI (in windoze) is the lowest common denomenator thing. The reason for the UI in Linux is the (possibly mistaken) belief that copying windoze is always best.

But what I wanna know, is why all the damn skins!? I know, I know--copying windoze again. I haven't actually tried much video playing under Linux, though I will be RSN.

Do either of MPlayer or xine let you turn off the stupid skins? I hate skins because they contribute essencially nothing and they waste CPU cycles (and RAM, and hard disk space). I mean, it's kind of cool that they're supported, I guess. But they should be a luxury item only. They should be disabled by default, or at least disable-able.

Re:MPlayer

[sir99]

If you compile mplayer without the gui, then it doesn't have skins, of course :) All you get is a window with a movie playing inside (or no window at all for fullscreen mode). It has on-screen display (like a vcr), which eliminates the need for a gui anyway, and the developers apparently put in a full-blown shell recently, also overlayed onto the video. I think these features are somewhat alpha-quality, but they should be ready Real Soon Now.

Re:MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, I had almost the exact opposite experience. Granted it's a while since I used xine, but I found mplayer a much better (less buggy, more formats and nicer options), so I stuck with it.

The only thing that doesn't work is trying to play realmedia streams... the sound isn't synced well at all.

Re:MPlayer

[evilviper]

I'm using a 166Mhz it was a bit slow, so I just used mencoder to transform the quicktime file into divx5.

What I'd like to know, is why these features have not made it to non-x86 platforms. Just as they used pieces of Wine to load DLLs, so too could they use parts of Bochs to load Wine. Although the performance might be horrible, as in your case, anyone could re-encode it to some level of MPEG (1,2,4). Now that would be a killer app for MPlayer... The only way to play Quicktime, WM9, etc, on a non-x86 platform. Inability to convert those formats is the only thing keeping many people from dropping x86 machines completely.

Re:MPlayer

[Trolling4Dollars]

I don't know how deep you plan to go in terms of building this: Just install a typical distro (RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE) or install something light and build X, KDE, Gnome, etc... But here's what I did:

I installed a VERY spare RedHat installation (No GUI or servers other than ssh and sendmail).
I downloaded a tarball for the latest kernel at the time, 2.4.18, and compiled it with frame buffer support (so my ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder card would output to TV properly).
Then I compiled my own XFree86, configured it to use the fbdev driver and installed Ximian and KDE 3.0 overtop of that. Finally, I installed a ton of libs for various media formats and finally compiled and installed mplayer. I have to say, it is THE best media player for Linux I've seen. Yes, I've gotten the error messages saying my system is too slow (P III with 768 Megs of RAM), but the program actually works fine. Combined with the gtk based GUI, MPlayer rocks! It's themable, has a nice OSD and the keyboard acts as a great controller for whatever meadia you are viewing/listening to. This all got built into a custom case and is sitting with the rest of my stereo equipment. Now, if only I could get ffmpeg to work, I could make it my PVR too! :) MPlayer rocks. I've tried Xine and vlc. While they work well, they don't have all the functionality that MPlayer does.

Re:MPlayer

[gid]

Scanning the FV25 mobo page it looks like a lot of the hardware is the same.

The prosavage 4 chipset needs XFree86 4.2.x or higher (4.1 locks the machine up solid) so pick your distribution accordingly, you can get 4.1.x to work if you download the newer driver from this page tho: http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html

I haven't tested the tv out yet as I've always had it hooked up to a monitor. I went the other way and stuffed a pci TV card in the thing (damn that was a tight fit :) so I could use it as a TV.

The onboard sound is nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done. Ethernet works fine as well, I believe it uses the realtek or tulip drivers.

Re:MPlayer

[gid]

Interesting, I'm quite suprised the the fbdev driver is fast enough for MPlayer.

I just installed Debian on mine, just make sure you have XFree86 4.2 or newer (it's in sid and maybe sarge).

Re:MPlayer

[gid]

Yeah, I went for the celeron because the p3's were easily twice as expensive or more at the time, and I was pretty sure that the celeron was going to be able to handle the job, which it did, and still does. :) I'd still make the same choice by going with a celeron and saving myself 90 bucks.

Heck I just realized the slowest computer I still use is a p3-850, and that's a play server I have set up at the office in Maryland. :)

Re:MPlayer

[xchino]

Mplayer isn't only a little more fully featured, it's tons more featured than Xine. Most people only use it for it's playback functionality and don't even realise it's encoding prowess. It has a much larger resource footprint than Xine however, and is traditionally geared towards powerusers, but their new skinnable GUI is developing quite rapidly. Performance has been tremendous for me, no skipping when playing tightly compressed DivX ;-) formats. Perhaps your performance problems stem from improper compilation options?
On a side note, Mplayer is the msot reliable of all Media Players I've tried. I'm sure we've all gotten that one media type that just wouldn't play , or would only play video bot not audi or vice versa. Mplayer has played all of these problem files for me flawlessly. And without contacting big brother to let him know what I'm doing (eg Windows Media Player).

As you can tell I'm an Mplayer fan :)

Re:MPlayer

[kennyj449]

Actually, overclocked a Celeron can outrun a PII/III quite easily. The main things are cache and FSB - the celeron at the time the PIII came out had much faster (if much smaller) cache, and if you brought the FSB up from 66 to closer to 100 (PIIIs ran at 100) then you could match, if not exceed, an equivalent PIII.

My celerons run at 525, and perform comparably to a 550mhz PII.

Of course, a stock 550mhz Celeron would be slower than either.

I miss TIPS

[Skyshadow]

Considering what I've been reading the last few weeks about this new Department of Information Awareness, I think I miss TIPS. Bad to worse and all -- TIPS was at least simply a formal structure for Americans to report on one another. DoIA, on the other hand, seems more like a full-out spy organization targetted towards the American people.

I am perpetually shocked at the willingness of Americans to give away the rights for which their ancestors suffered so much.

Menace the average modern American with anything halfway alarming -- terrorism, crime or any other of today's various boogeymen -- and in place of their forebearers' bravery, idealism and resolve, they will show cowardice, surrender and an astounding aptitude for cognative dissonence. They will gratefully trade their liberties for even the illusion of security, and will gladly indenture themselves to anyone who claims to offer them safety. How far we've fallen from the day when men like Washinton, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt fought for and to protect the central ideas of American Democracy.

How we've betrayed the bravery of our heritage.

I believe that if America stands for anything, it's the rights which it is supposed to guarantee its citizens. Strip that away, and what are you left with? Nothing more than a location on a map and base nationalism. To give away our hard-won rights is disgusting cowardice, and to strip them from others is nothing less than treason.

Re:I miss TIPS

[dynayellow]

The political demagogue is powered, today as he was in ancient Rome, by the mob. The mouthbreathers.

The mouthbreather doesn't care about freedom of speech; his opinions are the popular ones. If the popular opinion changes, so will his. The mouthbreather doesn't care about freedom of the press; he just wants to be entertained.

What the mouthbreather really wants is to get through his day, safely, and have it be exactly the way it was the day before.

In "Easy Rider," Jack N's character says something along the lines of "People 'round here will go on and on about freedom, but if you show them a man who's really free, they'll hate him."

Re:I miss TIPS

[Anonymous Coward]

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Ben Franklin

Re:I miss TIPS

[rasche]

As an European (non eastern), I'm
quite surprised Americans allowed something
like TIPS or the whole Patriot Act to
happen in the first place.

Always thought the American constitution
allow enough power to the authorities
to defend the country and safeguard the
freedom of its citizens.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Tempelherr]

This new department of Information Awareness in the Pentagon really scares the heck out of me too. I mean...we're talking about a database designed to store just about every piece of information about an individual that is possible to get.

Another thing I found really disturbing was Bush's appointment of John Poindexter as head of the new project. Poindexter was one of the people in the Reagan administration who was convicted for taking part in the Iran-Contra affair, though his conviction was overturned due to a technical error. And now this guy who played a role in selling missiles to Iran to fund a war in Nicaragua is in charge of keeping a database of about everyone out there.

Granted, maybe this guy has changed, and admittedly I don't have all the information on this guy's background, just what I have read in various classes. I just really hope that this database gets curtailed (which in my opinion would be best), or at least some form of strong congressional oversight...

Re:I miss TIPS

[pete-classic]

I would have prefered to email you, but . . .

Anyway, that's a really great post. Are you a member of the JPFO? They are the greatest defenders of the Bill of Right that we have, AFAICT.

Also, are you aware that your next post will be your 2^10th? Make it count!

-Peter

Re:I miss TIPS

[Wyatt Earp]

"How far we've fallen from the day when men like Washinton, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt fought for and to protect the central ideas of American Democracy."

No. Burr, Hamilton and Davis fought for Democracy.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln fought for a Republic. FDR fought for a Socialist system and broke the Constitution everywhich way in the 30s.

Lincoln also violated the US Constitution so much more than the last 5 administrations have.

Maryland under Martial Law, Newspaper Editors thrown in jail or deported, etc.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Anonymous Coward]

it was named the Patriot Act. immediately after Sept 11. it could have had funding for child porn, there was no way it was not getting passed.

and it is truly sad thats what i see in my govt

Re:I miss TIPS

[Lord Omlette]

Every night, good red-blooded Americans turn on their teevees and see their leaders telling them that they are free and they live in the best country in the world. As far as these people are concerned, their "hard-won" rights are still there!

Re:I miss TIPS

[Carmody]

skyshadow: May I put that on my website? Do I credit "skyshadow" or do you have a preferred soberquet?

Re:I miss TIPS

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

It's like this...

It hasn't been up to the people to insure their freedom for about 200 years. It's up the the courts and ultimately the Supreme Court to strike down unconstitutional laws.

Congress passing oppressive laws is nothing new. Fortunately, the Supreme Court striking them down is nothing new either.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Platinum Dragon]

Bad to worse and all -- TIPS was at least simply a formal structure for Americans to report on one another. DoIA, on the other hand, seems more like a full-out spy organization targetted towards the American people.

The best way for a totalitarian regime to maintain power is to involve the population in their own oppression. The people in power have the work of rooting out potential subversives done for them, while the people under control believe they're doing something great for their country by rooting out those subversives who threaten the nation's stability.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Platinum Dragon]

Poindexter was one of the people in the Reagan administration who was convicted for taking part in the Iran-Contra affair, though his conviction was overturned due to a technical error.

Not quite.

He was given immunity for his Congressional testimony, which many people believe saved Reagan's ass from the Clinton treatment. Funny thing is, those same people believe Poindexter lied his ass off to save Reagan's ass. Therefore, Poindexter's immunity gave him the power to say practically anything in order to protect his boss, including flat-out lies that no one else would contradict, since they also worked for the same guy.

I'm reading Veil by Bob Woodward right now. It's amazing, some of the legal backflips the Reagan administration and CIA had to perform in order to justify things like the contra war in Nicaragua and arms sales to Iran through Israel. That last pairing alone, which I'd been unaware of until reading the book, made my head spin - Israel participating with Iran in a US plan to fund right-wing death squads in Latin America? Truth is stranger than fiction.

Re:I miss TIPS

[AyeRoxor!]

On-topic satire!<Image>

Re:I miss TIPS

[jayteedee]

How far we've fallen from the day when men like Washinton, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt fought for and to protect the central ideas of American Democracy.

How far we've fallen to consider that Washinton, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt would have fought for a democracy. They would have recoiled in horror at the thought. Especially since they instituted a consitutional republic. You might be right if the Roosevelt to which you refer is the Franklin variety, who was indeed for a democracy. However, the other 3 and the Teddy version definately were not in favor.

FYI: A republic is a government in which the supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.
Democracy is basically mob rule or 50.000001% wins, damn the laws, damn the minority which in this example would be 49.999999% of the people (hence the term mob rule).

One quote from another famous person from the same line of thinking: "Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." James Madison

Re:I miss TIPS

[benzapp]

This is certainly true. The most brilliant system however is the federal system which underlines the republic. Since the FBI was created in the wake of the fraud that was World War I, the federal government has systematically overstepped the boundries placed upon it by the constitution.

I am not going to spend too much time discussing my personal historical feelings, but maintaining virtually autonomous states seems redundant to most people, including most Americans. But, when the revolution comes, the state governments will continue even if Washington DC is nuked off the face of the earth.

The founding fathers very well knew the size of the United States, and knew that while they were creating a New Rome, their empire would suffer the same fate. Instead of fracturing in haphazard ways as did Europe with the collapse of the empire, the United States is completely capable of functioning without a central authority.

What the bureaucrats don't realize is how truly irrelevant they are. Their days are numbered. I believe a violent revolution will not occur in the US, but will evolve much as the evolution of Europe. Soon, Washington DC will become completely irrelevant to the average citizen, just as Rome became irrelevant to the citizens of Gaul as France was born. Any student of US law will realize the radical differences between California and New York will only amplify in time. There is already a radical difference in behavior, speech, mannerism, dress... Hell, California is already larger than many, if not most, European nations. Just a thought.

Re:I miss TIPS

[ChronosX]

Your quote got me thinking about something I once read by H.L. Mencken, a well known political journalist, who was active in the first half of the last century. He simply said, "The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe".

This prompted me to do a little more research into the man and found he had quite amazing insight into the mind of the government and the people. For example, I found another marvelous passage that seems to apply well to this very situation as it did many decades ago:

If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

Re:I miss TIPS

[nyseal]

This is REALLY weird. I used to fear Communism and nuclear war from our 'enemies'; now I fear databases from my own government. How ironic; maybe the Cold War should have just kept going.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not going to spend too much time discussing my personal historical feelings

You already have. Shut up, okay?

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

But, when the revolution comes, the state governments will continue even if Washington DC is nuked off the face of the earth.

I'm not sure how you define "function" in this context. If it comes to war-- which is what I assume you're talking about, what with the "nuked off the face of the earth" thing and all-- the several states will be utterly defenseless. An occupying force could march into any state capitol in the country, gun down the legislature, and take control with virtually no organized opposition.

And let's not forget something that's even more critical than defense: the economy. Our economy is managed-- to the extent that it's managed at all-- from a central bank in Washington. That bank issues all U.S. currency, and backs it. If it disappeared... well, chaos.

And finally, just to pick one example of many, one that, as a restaurant owner, is near and dear to my heart, we have the USDA and the FDA. There are essentially no state-scale systems for the inspection, grading, and certification of foodstuffs. If the Federal government were to evaporate, we'd be back in the days of unregulated food production. Could we live with it? Sure. But I sure as hell wouldn't want to.

The Federal government is far from irrelevant.

Oh, and your thing about "a radical difference in behavior, speech, mannerism, dress?" Utter crap. There are essentially no cultural differences between any two points in this country, notwithstanding differences that are based on factors that transcend geography, such as race or ethnicity. You can get on a plane and go from Miami to Houston to Phoenix to San Francisco to Denver to Omaha to Chicago to Detroit to Boston to Richmond to Atlanta and back to Miami and not find any significant differences between any of them.

Re:I miss TIPS

[MrChuck]

PATRIOT act - all caps, it's an acronym
Per: The act
This Act may be cited as the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001

And the constituion (a fine read, really) allows enough power to the citizens to defend the country and safeguard its citizens from the government.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Blkdeath]

The best way for a totalitarian regime to maintain power is to involve the population in their own oppression. The people in power have the work of rooting out potential subversives done for them, while the people under control believe they're doing something great for their country by rooting out those subversives who threaten the nation's stability.

This reminds me of that age-old joke about the cold war, set in Russia;

The police arrive at a man's house, shove him aside, and proceed to dig up his entire garden! The man stands calmly by, watching as they dig and dig, tossing clumps of soil aside and back again in a fervent search. Finding nothing, they grunt in disgust and leave.

The man walks to his neighbor's house and says;

"Thanks! So tomorrow I phone and tell them you have secret documents stashed in the logs in your woodshed, right?"

Re:I miss TIPS

[minion]

I am perpetually shocked at the willingness of Americans to give away the rights for which their ancestors suffered so much.

Menace the average modern American with anything halfway alarming -- terrorism, crime or any other of today's various boogeymen -- and in place of their forebearers' bravery, idealism and resolve, they will show cowardice, surrender and an astounding aptitude for cognative dissonence. They will gratefully trade their liberties for even the illusion of security, and will gladly indenture themselves to anyone who claims to offer them safety.

Is that really true? How many people do you talk to a day that claim, "yeah, I don't mind having my phone line tapped and recorded, or taking a blood test once a year because the government asked me to". I bet its hard to name people that actually think that. So, my question: Where are these people coming from these "polls" that they keep taking? Its probably the same people that keep voting that coke tastes better than pepsi, that I-Can't-Believe-Its-Not-Butter is indistinguishable from real butter, and that 65 is a safe national speed limit. These people don't really exist. You pay someone money, they'll vote whatever way you want them to.

When we had the bombing of the trade towers, tons of New Yorkers were out there, volunteering to help... You probably remember the same interviews, with the steel workers, and how determined they were to help, and how much those damn terrorist bastards were going to pay. In my home town, there were TONS of people flying flag-pole-sized american flags on flagpoles! attached to their truck beds! These people want blood, they don't want to sit on the sidelines and watch political debates.

I can't recall one conversation that I had with someone willing to give up their freedom to help stop terrorism. These people are made up by our left-wing, self-righteous media, period.

Re:I miss TIPS

[jascat]

I hope that none of "those appointed over me" see this, but it is things like this that make it so hard to keep on fighting for this country. I live in a tent for six months out of my life and live seperated from my family and friends and eat sucky food and shower with other dudes just so when I get home, those I am fighting to protect get more of their "American" freedoms taken away.

On the other hand, your everyday "American" won't take the time to get involved in the issues. Most won't even get off their duffs to vote once every two years or so. How many people are out there telling people about their freedoms and rights being taken away and how many are writing their congress person? How many care beyond how much is taken out of their pay check? You can't even get people to get involved with local government when those issues affect them directly!

You see, I have a hard time being out here suffering for people who don't care enough for themselves to make a stand against our leaders taking away the freedoms we fight to protect. I guess it all comes down to protecting the system and the freedom of our leaders to take away the freedoms of the people...however messed up that might be.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Sri Lumpa]

Menace the average modern American with anything halfway alarming -- terrorism, crime or any other of today's various boogeymen -- and in place of their forebearers' bravery, idealism and resolve, they will show cowardice, surrender and an astounding aptitude for cognative dissonence.

And all that because of, what? 10-20 terrorists? Atleast it took a whole army to get France to surrender.

Time to plant some trees on the boulevard leading to the White House for Osama's arrival ;).

Re:I miss TIPS

[Happy go Lucky]

I'm not sure how you define "function" in this context. If it comes to war-- which is what I assume you're talking about, what with the "nuked off the face of the earth" thing and all-- the several states will be utterly defenseless. An occupying force could march into any state capitol in the country, gun down the legislature, and take control with virtually no organized opposition.

You think they'll detail enough troops into Denver to deal with the Colorado National Guard? I'll also remind you, outside of the Denver city and county limits, we have more guns than people. And terrain highly unfavorable to tanks.

And let's not forget something that's even more critical than defense: the economy. Our economy is managed-- to the extent that it's managed at all-- from a central bank in Washington. That bank issues all U.S. currency, and backs it.

So, there are no Federal Reserve Banks in Denver, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, et cetera?

Oh, and your thing about "a radical difference in behavior, speech, mannerism, dress?" Utter crap. There are essentially no cultural differences between any two points in this country, notwithstanding differences that are based on factors that transcend geography,

Come to my neighborhood and say that. We are NOT the same as Easterners. We don't live and die by public transportation. We buy groceries six weeks at a time. We actually have good and functional reasons to drive pickup trucks and SUVs with gun racks, and those reasons do not include the amusement of idiots from Los Angeles or Boston. Where I grew up, everybody ran trotlines or traplines. Thanks to a bunch of self-righteous asses in Boulder, traplines are no longer a legal option here, but that can change too. And there's not too much that Uncle Sam does for us that we can't do better ourselves. Run an army, maybe, although personally I think we should let Europe defend its own oil supply.

You can get on a plane and go from Miami to Houston to Phoenix to San Francisco to Denver to Omaha to Chicago to Detroit to Boston to Richmond to Atlanta and back to Miami and not find any significant differences between any of them.

It helps if you actually get off of the plane. Try listening to Hank Williams, Jr's "A Country Boy Can Survive." That song describes life in some very large parts of the country, and utterly foreign in others.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Happy go Lucky]

No. Burr, Hamilton and Davis fought for Democracy.

ALEXANDER Hamilton??? Not likely. He was arguably the very strongest proponent of hereditary aristocracy among the Founding Fathers.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln fought for a Republic.

Washington was certainly no democrat. Remember who appointed Hamilton (see above) as Secretary of the Treasury? (At the time, it was arguably the most powerful post in the cabinet. It very well might still be.)

For what it's worth, Jefferson is usually considered to be the first real democrat in the US.

FDR fought for a Socialist system and broke the Constitution everywhich way in the 30s.

Did he say FDR? No. He just said "Roosevelt." There WERE more than one.

Re:I miss TIPS

[mccaffer]

well you know when washington DC is destroyed and the mighty greenback is worthless, you could always use the euro !! ;-)
no wonder they water down the beer in the US, if you lot ever got drunk you'd never be able to tell which not was which. We have coloured notes. In fact I've heard the Irish are proposing a luminous yellow 20 note ;-)

Re:I miss TIPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've often got into discussions about guns and your constitution. One thing that always comes up is that people say that they have the right to bear arms to protect themselves from burglars.
It looks like you are about to discover that the right to bear arms is actually to defend yourselves from policemen.

Re:I miss TIPS

[5KVGhost]

I'm not sure how you define "function" in this context. If it comes to war-- which is what I assume you're talking about, what with the "nuked off the face of the earth" thing and all-- the several states will be utterly defenseless. An occupying force could march into any state capitol in the country, gun down the legislature, and take control with virtually no organized opposition.

It certainly wouldn't be business as usual, nor would a full-scale land invasion be easily repelled, but I have to question your "no organized opposition" statement. The states do have National Guard units at their disposal in the event of a millitary emergency. They're soldiers with millitary equipment and training, and it's unlikely that they'd all be off serving overseas somewhere when the bad stuff happens. There's also the civilian police forces, some of which have some pretty serious firepower of their own.

Oh, and your thing about "a radical difference in behavior, speech, mannerism, dress?" Utter crap. There are essentially no cultural differences between any two points in this country, notwithstanding differences that are based on factors that transcend geography, such as race or ethnicity.

Huh? So people here in Westminster, Maryland act, talk, dress, eat, and think exactly like the people in Los Angeles, Missoula, Gettysburg, and Anchorage? That's a ridiculous statement.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Hard_Code]

Uh, except that isn't Europe re-"federalizing" with the advent of the EU??

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You think they'll detail enough troops into Denver to deal with the Colorado National Guard?

Why not? Drop an infantry division or two into Colorado-- or, more likely, bring them up through the Rio Grande valley and into Colorado from the south-- and you'll have a fight on your hands.

So, there are no Federal Reserve Banks in Denver, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, et cetera?

Sure, just like there are branch offices of the FBI, the ATF, and so on. But if you remove the head, the body dies. Federal Reserve banks can't act autonomously.

We are NOT the same as Easterners.

Do you speak English? Do you read and write with the same letters everybody else uses? Do you marry, and raise children in family units? Do you eat three meals a day, with knives and forks? Do you attend church, mosque, or synagogue-- or not-- depending on your preferences? Do you bury or burn your dead? Do you dance or sing? Do you cut your grass? Do you drink alcohol or smoke tobacco? Do you cook your food before eating it? Do you eat, essentially, the same foods that people from "Los Angeles or Boston" eat?

Sorry, but "we buy groceries six weeks at a time" doesn't qualify as a significant cultural difference. If you had a different language, or different customs, or both, that might mean something. But what kind of car you drive doesn't amount to a hill of beans from an anthropological point of view.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

no wonder they water down the beer in the US, if you lot ever got drunk you'd never be able to tell which not was which.

Yeah, it's not like the giant numbers in the corners would be a clue or anything. Maybe functional literacy is to high a standard for all of y'all to hold to.

We have coloured notes.

'Round here we call that "Monopoly money." And then we vacation in Australia and live like a king on American dollars.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The states do have National Guard units at their disposal in the event of a millitary emergency.

Yeah, but don't underestimate the power of a well-supplied infantry division of 10,000-20,000 men. The U.S. is planning-- by some accounts-- to use three forward divisions, a force of about 50,000 men, in a hypothetical invasion of Iraq. How well would the Louisiana National Guard handle it if that many men came ashore at New Orleans and started heading northward? They'd put up a fight, sure, but would they win?

Of course, this is all fantasy, because a massed land invasion of the continental U.S. is hard to imagine, unless the black hats conquered or allied with Mexico or Canada first. But it's fun to speculate.

Huh? So people here in Westminster, Maryland act, talk, dress, eat, and think exactly like the people in Los Angeles, Missoula, Gettysburg, and Anchorage? That's a ridiculous statement.

Your world-view is too small. Compare the lifestyle of an average person from Westmister to the lifestyle of a bedouin, or an Australian blackfella, or a Maasai, or a Mongolian yak-herder. Kinda puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

Hell, there are even noticeable cultural differences between Americans and Japanese. On the surface, the lifestyle of a 21st century American and a 21st century Japanese seem pretty similar. But the Japanese have very different ideas of marriage and funeral rituals, of family relationships, and even of what is and what is not edible than Americans. These are anthropologically significant. The differences between a guy from Fort Worth, Texas, and a guy from Seattle, Washington, are not significant.

Re:I miss TIPS

[dsl]

So by your broad definition of cultural equivalence, there are no significant differences between life in LA, or Boston, or Delhi, or Shanghai? They do all of those things in those places, too (though maybe they don't have grass to cut in Shanghai)? I think your brushstrokes may be just a LITTLE too broad.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So by your broad definition of cultural equivalence, there are no significant differences between life in LA, or Boston, or Delhi, or Shanghai?

The checklist in anthropology goes something like this: language, food, family, ritual, religion, recreation. The things that distinguish a culture are typically how they speak and write; what they eat and how they eat it; what their family relationships are like; how they handle events like birth, marriage, and death; how they worship; and what they do for fun.

Between L.A. and Boston, these things are all very similar or identical. For example, the diet of a person in Boston is indistinguishable, in terms of total calorie consumption per day, the nature and variety of foodstuffs, and the ways in which food is acquired, prepared, and eaten, from the diet of a person in L.A, Portland, or Bozeman, Montana. The diet of an Indian or a Chinese, however, is markedly different, just as the Indian and the Chinese are markedly different from each other.

When you look at it from this perspective, life in Boston is very different from life in Nairobi, quite different from life in Hanoi, somewhat different from life in Helsinki, similar to life in Berlin, virtually indistinguishable from life in Sydney, and completely indistinguishable from life in Monroe, Louisiana.

Re:I miss TIPS

[dsl]

I don't think any of the Bostonians I've known would understand the life or diet of a Louisianan at all (or vice versa). Language, food, and recreation are certainly all VASTLY different between those two locales. I'd wager that most people from Boston would have an easier time understanding the speech of a visitor from India than that of a Cajun.

On your post to which I originally replied, the only category in which Americans (of whatever region) are likely to be more distinguishable from Indians (who I am singling out somewhat unfairly as being, from a middle-American perspective, pretty much the exotic end of the English-speaking world), is in diet. And since most of the Americans I know eat Indian cuisine at least occasionally, and most of the Indians I know eat American "cuisine" at least occasionally, even that is a questionable difference.

Re:I miss TIPS

[2short]

So you think the differences between Boston and LA are comparable to the differences between Boston and Delhi?

For that matter, you think Indian food consumed in Boston has more in common with Indian food in Delhi than American food in Boston?

You have never been to Delhi.

Re:I miss TIPS

[dsl]

Obviously Boston is more different from Delhi than it is from LA (assuming we're meaning Los Angeles - parts of south Louisiana, I think it might be a tossup). That's not the point. The point is that the original list of attributes (practices a religion, cooks food, speaks English), by which we were determining that Boston and LA are culturally indistinguishable, is sufficiently imprecise as to make Boston and Delhi appear culturally indistinguishable, as well.

And if we're speaking anthropologically (rather than quality-of-ingredients type issues), then yes, I think that Indian food consumed in Boston IS more along the lines of Delhian Indian food than Bostonian American food. But as you say, I've never been to Delhi (or Asia at all, for that matter).

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I don't think any of the Bostonians I've known would understand the life or diet of a Louisianan at all (or vice versa). Language, food, and recreation are certainly all VASTLY different between those two locales.

No, no. Language? People from Boston and New Orleans speak the exact same language, modulo a few regional idioms or pronunciation differences. When the national evening news comes on in both cities, nobody has trouble understanding Peter Jennings. More importantly, people from both cities read and write the same language with the same alphabet. Hell, people from New Orleans and Boston can even read one another's handwriting.

Food? No noticeable differences. People in Boston get their food from a market, probably a regional or national supermarket chain, just like people in New Orleans. Neither group grows their own food, except for the occasional herb or salad garden, and notwithstanding commercial farmers in and around either region. Both groups eat the same basic foods: fruits, vegetables, and grains indigenous to North America, and some from more distant locales; beef, pork, and lamb, and to a lesser extent venison, rabbit, and other game meats; chicken, turkey, goose, and duck; fish and crustaceans from fresh, brackish, and salt waters. Also noteworthy are the omissions that both groups share. Neither group eats much mutton, horse, or goat, and while both drink milk, it is almost universally the milk of a cow, not milk from a goat or a sheep. Both groups prepare their foods in essentially the same way: meat, fowl, and fish are cooked, while vegetables are either cooked or eaten raw, and fruits are usually eaten raw. Grains are almost universally boiled. Particular styles of cuisine vary from region to region, but not as much as you might thing; one can find a pot of baked beans in New Orleans as easily as a pot of crawfish etouffee in Boston.

Recreation? The New England Patriots and the New Orleans Saints. Both groups see the same movies, play the same sports and games. Weather sometimes dictates different forms of outdoor fun, but there are about the same number of recreational boats on the Gulf and the Mississippi River as there are on Boston Harbor.

Indians (who I am singling out somewhat unfairly as being, from a middle-American perspective, pretty much the exotic end of the English-speaking world)

You are aware, are you not, that India is not technically part of the English-speaking world? While English is a very important language in India, the national language is Hindu. There are 14 other official languages, including Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, and a bunch more. None of these languages uses the Roman alphabet, or anything like it.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Happy go Lucky]

The checklist in anthropology goes something like this: language, food,

The average Bostonian's approach to food probably doesn't include "First, shoot it." Opening day of deer/elk season is a bigger holiday here than New Year's Day. and probably comparable to Christmas.

family, ritual, religion, recreation.

See above about killing cute animals and eating them.

And yes, I AM arguing that as a profound difference. It reflects a greater sense of independence. Group A perceives itself as being able to see to its own needs without a great deal of aid from a government two thousand miles away. Group B does not. Group A will resent any attempt to rob it of its perceived independence. Group B will usually welcome such attempts.

Group A buys its groceries six weeks at a time because Group A has knowledge of periods every year when roads are closed because of bad weather, or when they can't spare the time to go into town to shop. Group B already is in town, in an environment where they might not even have their own bad-weather transportation (the aforementioned pickup truck).

Group A and Group B's musical tastes are probably a little different. If Boston/Baltimore/NYC have that many country stations, I'd be surprised.

Group B looks at the newspapers read by Group A and sees them as being from hick towns of no importance. Group A sees group B's media as being from a different planet, not much more comprehensible than the stuff crunched by SETI@Home.

Group A is probably lacking in formal education. Few members of Group B will know all of the steps involved in turning a live chicken into Sunday Dinner.

When you look at it from this perspective, life in Boston is very different from life in Nairobi, quite different from life in Hanoi, somewhat different from life in Helsinki, similar to life in Berlin, virtually indistinguishable from life in Sydney, and completely indistinguishable from life in Monroe, Louisiana.

So, in other words, Hoisington, Kansas is virtually indistinguishable from Christchurch, New Zealand?

What a relief! No more midwestern winters!

The things that distinguish a culture are typically how they speak and write; what they eat and how they eat it; what their family relationships are like; how they handle events like birth, marriage, and death; how they worship; and what they do for fun.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So, in other words, Hoisington, Kansas is virtually indistinguishable from Christchurch, New Zealand?

From orbit? Yes.

That laundry list of things that you think make you fundamentally different from other Americans is laughable at best. It only goes to show that your worldview is far, far too small.

Re:I miss TIPS

[2short]

"We are NOT the same as Easterners"

If by "we" you mean your fellow country bumpkins, fine, but elsewhere in your post you seemed to be talking of "Coloradans". In that case note that 81% of us live in the metropolitan areas along the front range, and have a lot more in common with those damn Easterners than with you.

"Try listening to Hank Williams, Jr's 'A Country Boy Can Survive.'"
I did listen to most of it once. Couldn't find the stero remote.

"That song describes life in some very large parts of the country, and utterly foreign in others."

Large, but not populous; and your use of "utterly foreign" suggest you have not left this country.

Sincerely,
A Self-Righteous Ass in Boulder

Re:I miss TIPS

[2short]

"The point is that the original list of attributes (practices a religion, cooks food, speaks English), by which we were determining that Boston and LA are culturally indistinguishable, is sufficiently imprecise as to make Boston and Delhi appear culturally indistinguishable, as well."

WHICH religions are practiced; WHAT KIND of food is cooked; etc. Any reasonable metric of cultural similarity should make Boston, Los Angeles, and yes, southern Louisiana, not indistinguishable, but much, much closer together than any of them are to Delhi. I have been to all four places. In Boston and Los Angeles, I felt right at home. In Lousiana, I felt somewhat like an outsider. In Delhi, I felt like a martian.

The crack about Indian food in Boston vs. Delhi was mostly a joke, but: If I gave someone a taste of Boston Indian food, and he liked it, and then I had to guess whether he'd prefer Boston American food or Delhian Indian food, it would be American all the way.

Re:I miss TIPS

[dsl]

WHICH religions are practiced; WHAT KIND of food is cooked; etc. Any reasonable metric of cultural similarity should make Boston, Los Angeles, and yes, southern Louisiana, not indistinguishable, but much, much closer together than any of them are to Delhi.

Absolutely. But the first post I was replying to wasn't asking "Which religion? What kind of food is cooked?", but "Is there a religion? Is food cooked instead of consumed raw?"

Re:I miss TIPS

[benzapp]

I'm not sure how you define "function" in this context. If it comes to war-- which is what I assume you're talking about, what with the "nuked off the face of the earth" thing and all-- the several states will be utterly defenseless. An occupying force could march into any state capitol in the country, gun down the legislature, and take control with virtually no organized opposition.

I think you don't give states enough credit. I picked california as my example because it is so large. If you don't think a political entity with 40 million people can't muster up at least 1 million soldiers in times of need, well I can't change your mind.

And let's not forget something that's even more critical than defense: the economy. Our economy is managed-- to the extent that it's managed at all-- from a central bank in Washington. That bank issues all U.S. currency, and backs it. If it disappeared... well, chaos.

This is why I mentioned Rome. Very similar situation as far as currency. I don't want to get into an argument over monetary policy, but to suggest a modern economy is absolutely dependent on a central bank is just not being honest. There are valid arguments for having truly valuable currency or the artificial sort we have today... But to say one system works and the other doesn't. What I am saying is this breakdown in the social structure will not occur immediately, rather it will be gradual. But even when a central bank, people get by. Look at Argentina. Their currency is worthless, for months they couldn't even remove it from their banks. What do you think they have been doing for the last year? This is a huge topic, but I predict central banking as we know it today will be gone within the decade.

And finally, just to pick one example of many, one that, as a restaurant owner, is near and dear to my heart, we have the USDA and the FDA. There are essentially no state-scale systems for the inspection, grading, and certification of foodstuffs. If the Federal government were to evaporate, we'd be back in the days of unregulated food production. Could we live with it? Sure. But I sure as hell wouldn't want to.

This is certainly a benefit of sorts. But states can easily manage it if the needs arise. I eat a very strict diet of only fruit, nuts, and raw fish. I try and eat organic. The only standard to which I adhered was the Organic Foods act of 1990 passed by the California legislature. It wasn't until this year the FDA had a standard on what is organic. Fish isn't even inspected. Inspection is not necessary, and if people want it its not hard. It sounds crazy, but humans got by just fine without food inspection for a long, long time. Look at photos of folks from the 1880's. They look a lot more human than the hideous blobs that populate our nation today. Huge quantities of wheat opioid peptides are refined and added to foods to make them addictive, and to placate the masses. 15% of children today are asthmatic due to the respiratory suppression caused by these glutomorphine molecules of wheat origin. Even though plenty of medical literature exists indicating this fact, the federal government has yet to even issue an advisory on this fact.

The FDA has absolutely no interest in the general health and welfare of the people. Food is just one more tool of control exercised by your beloved federal government.

Oh, and your thing about "a radical difference in behavior, speech, mannerism, dress?" Utter crap. There are essentially no cultural differences between any two points in this country, notwithstanding differences that are based on factors that transcend geography, such as race or ethnicity. You can get on a plane and go from Miami to Houston to Phoenix to San Francisco to Denver to Omaha to Chicago to Detroit to Boston to Richmond to Atlanta and back to Miami and not find any significant differences between any of them

If you really believe that, you must live in the suburbs and only travel to suburban areas. Some of these cities you mention are thoroughly monoculture. But, Miami? Have you even been there? Nearly half the people don't even speak english. I live in Brooklyn, NY and I can say with absolute certainty that the way people dress, behave, and conduct themselves is quit different here than Los Angeles or Miami. These differences are certainly not vast, but they increasing, and in fifty years I would venture to say New York, Los Angeles, and Miami will be far more different than you or I can imagine.

I have to say my main focus was legal. As I work with tax law on a daily basis as part of my wretched employment, I can say with absolute certainty that California is a like a whole other country. I would say that is more to my point.

I will say however I think you are right in a general sense, there are important reasons for our federal government to remain. I may not agree with them, but they may be compelling enough to keep this nation together for a while longer. I think history is on my side however. Time and time again, countries have tried to manage huge empires encompassing hundreds of millions of people over huge areas and they fail, each and every time. The dream of universal government and humanity cannot happen, it is our nature which drives us apart.

Re:I miss TIPS

[Guppy06]

"You think they'll detail enough troops into Denver to deal with the Colorado National Guard?"

You think the Colorado National Guard wouldn't have been federalized long before then and probably deployed elsewhere? They call it the National Guard for a reason. They're funded federally and the US president still outranks the governor of Colorado in the chain of command.

"So, there are no Federal Reserve Banks in Denver, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, et cetera?"

Where is Greenspan? Sure, Denver is one of the few places in the country where you could probably continue printing/minting US currency, but nobody in Denver or anywhere near Denver decides prime lending rates.

"Come to my neighborhood and say that. We are NOT the same as Easterners. We don't live and die by public transportation. We buy groceries six weeks at a time. We actually have good and functional reasons to drive pickup trucks and SUVs with gun racks, and those reasons do not include the amusement of idiots from Los Angeles or Boston."

Alright, but I'm willing to bet that those same differences can be seen between your neighborhood and Denver. All those differences stem from "rural vs. urban" differences (which are common throughout the US) and not major geographical differences like Colorado vs. New York. There are many people living in upstate New York that fit your description.

MPlayer

[lunatik17]

The most likely reason why most ditros don't include MPlayer is because in order to fully utilize it, you need to compile from source. A lot of the optimizations have to be configured at compile time and the developers are against binary distributions of MPlayer. Even though I prefer it above any other media player, I think they need to address this issue before most distros will adopt it.

MPlayer

[dolby2]

I have tried Mplayer and I must say I find it rather buggy. A good alternative is xine, which has made great improvements in the lastest releases. But as always try for yourself:

xine: http://xine.sourceforge.net/
mplayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/

WMA 9 code from aviplayer/avifile

[gupg]

I think its important to point out that avifile was first to get the windows media player 9 codecs to work. Its another great multimedia project. Check it out at:
http://avifile.sourceforge.net/

Re:WMA 9 code from aviplayer/avifile

[Anonymous Coward]

MPlayers says they support WMA/WMV 9.

Re:WMA 9 code from aviplayer/avifile

[Anonymous Coward]

well according to avifile's page, it's both.

Re:WMA 9 code from aviplayer/avifile

[Anonymous Coward]

MPlayer specifically said they ported the code over from AVIfile. It's the same support.

Re:WMA 9 code from aviplayer/avifile

[sir99]

Yep, on the few occasions that mplayer can't play an AVI, aviplay (uses avifile) is usually able.

MPlayer in distros

[lmfr]

Not quite. Mplayer is a good piece of software, but in order to be work at full it needs proprietary, limited distributable codecs.

Re:MPlayer in distros

[lunatik17]

That is true, but it is also true of every other universal media player. It's the people using these proprietary codecs which are the problem, not the players.

For instance, if I wanted to watch a Sorenson Quicktime file, I have only two options: Codeweavers crossover plugin (which is excellent) and MPlayer. (I don't consider running the quicktime player through wine an option worth even considering. If you've ever done it you'd understand) I'm not aware of any other media players that support Sorenson, but if there are they'd be no better.

Re:MPlayer in distros

[Ost99]

For instance, if I wanted to watch a Sorenson Quicktime file, I have only two options: Codeweavers crossover plugin (which is excellent) and MPlayer. (I don't consider running the quicktime player through wine an option worth even considering. If you've ever done it you'd understand)

Huh? What do you think the Crossover plugin is?
It's a cusomized wine, with some install scripts. Notting more.

Some of the wine code must have been altered to make WMP 6.4 work, I can't get my wine to do that, but for the QuickTime all there is to it is to copy the QuickTime part of the wine.conf file in Crossover to you wine.conf, and everything works perfectly. I haven't noticed any difference in speed using the Crossover plugin compared to vanilla wine.

To make wine run QuickTime put this in your wine config:
[AppDefaults\\quicktimeplayer.exe\\DllOve rrides]
"ddraw" = ""
"*" = "builtin, native, so"

- Ost

Re:MPlayer in distros

[lunatik17]

Crossover lets you use the netscape plugin, though, through your favorite web browser. The actual windows application is one of the worst media player interfaces I have ever used and it's even worse under wine. Thats what I meant.

Re:MPlayer in distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't consider running the quicktime player through wine an option worth even considering. If you've ever done it you'd understand


I do it (well, did it). I am glad when MPlayer will do this for me (e.g. as soon as I got it compiled tomorrow), because half of the time it (quicktime crossover stuff I mean) doesn't work at all, and the other time it is slow, not resizable, or crashes.

WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[nezroy]

Actually, I think this was a partial success for Wal-Mart (from their point of view). With the threat of the DMCA, they got the prices removed so their competitors could not undercut them. They then backed down AFTER the post-Thanksgiving sale, costing them little to nothing to do so, and avoided the cost of actually having to pursue the lawsuit. Other than the relatively small press-coverage on /. and the single blurb on WSJ, they take almost no bad press over the whole affair. I'd say they accomplished exactly what they set out to do.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[Neolithic]

they take almost no bad press over the whole affair. I'd say they accomplished exactly what they set out to do.

This is why FatWallet needs to keep pressing the charges of the 512(f) provision and not let Wal*Mart settle out of court. Wal*Mart committed a very real crime and Wal*Mart must suffer the consequences of their actions. The DMCA must be shown to be a bad law.

Scenario: I threaten you with a gun for your money. Even were I to give the money back and say, "Sorry, no hard feelings," I would still go to jail.

Fuck Wal*Mart and fuck the DMCA.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[vaguelyamused]

Why did you have to post this? I posted almost the same thing further down in the discussion. I started on the post right as the story came up. Now I'll get modded down "redundant". You probably have lots of karma, I don't have much, now even less.

Can't you type any slower?

Please, it's the holidays.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[BollocksToThis]

Every minute of every day, someone YOU know is losing karma on slashdot due to thoughtless individuals with superior typing speeds.

SLOW DOWN.

(If you drink and post, you're a bloody idiot)

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[bluephone]

Scenario: I threaten you with a gun for your money. Even were I to give the money back and say, "Sorry, no hard feelings," I would still go to jail.

Of course you'd go to jail. I hold a copyright on the Intellectual Property of threatening people with guns for money.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[erroneus]

Then of course I would sue you... ... you realize that I hold the patent on the process of extracting money from a victim while using threat of death or bodily harm while displaying the instrument of said death of bodily harm in view of the victim.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[nyseal]

Then the both of you would come before me....a Supreme Court Justice....to hear the case. HAHAHAHAHAHA.........whoever pays the most wins! I CAN BE BOUGHT!

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[nyseal]

HEY....I can only post when I drink; that's the only time any of this makes sense.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The DMCA must be shown to be a bad law. Scenario: I threaten you with a gun for your money. Even were I to give the money back and say, "Sorry, no hard feelings," I would still go to jail.

Uh... I think your example is broken. Unless you're trying to say that the law against armed robbery is somehow a bad law.

This situation, despite what a shitload of misinformed people seem to think, does not mean the DMCA was a bad law. In fact, quite the opposite; 512(f) makes it against the law to use the DMCA in an unfair or unjust manner. That's not the mark of a bad law; that's the mark of a very good law.

Just because the DMCA makes things you would like to do illegal doesn't mean it is, prima facie, a bad law.

Fuck Wal*Mart and fuck the DMCA.

And fuck you, too.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[Anonymous Coward]

The Church gave this to you!?

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[PMuse]

This is why FatWallet needs to keep pressing the charges of the 512(f) provision and not let Wal*Mart settle out of court.

Perhaps what FatWallet needs to do is get back to being FatWallet. Their mission is the service they've set out to provide. If they devote their time and their funds to taking on WalMart, what will happen to that service? They don't have the resources to do both. Much as they'd probably like to pursue Walmart, trying would be a good way to destroy their business.

They take the victory. They walk away. Bonus: they just got their name mentioned in a WSJ article and on Slashdot.

Re:WalMart backed down after Thanksgiving

[dh003i]

This situation, despite what a shitload of misinformed people seem to think, does not mean the DMCA was a bad law. In fact, quite the opposite; 512(f) makes it against the law to use the DMCA in an unfair or unjust manner. That's not the mark of a bad law; that's the mark of a very good law.

That section is completely useless in reality. It hasn't stopped any unfair, unjust, or overzealous applications of the law. Big corporations will do whatever they want, and if someone tries to sue them for inappropriate use of the law, they will be immune due to their army of lawyers.

Just because the DMCA makes things you would like to do illegal doesn't mean it is, prima facie, a bad law.

Whether the intent of the law is good/bad is up for debate and not the question here. I won't go into the reasons why it's a bad law, but will note that every intellectual organization -- libraries, universities, rights organizations, etc -- campaigned (to no avail) against it. The politicians listened to the folks paying the biggest bribes: big-business.

The more important issue is that the DMCA is a vague, imprecise, and unclear law: even the nation's top lawyers can't agree on exactly what it means.

QFG2.

[garcia]

As great as the KQ series was I really preferred Quest for Glory II.

There was nothing like going out and fighting forever until you were SO strong nothing was a match for you...

EGA games *always* need to be redone... They were our classics.

Re:QFG2.

[nzhavok]

Man I remember spending so much time on "Hero's Quest" (QFG1) on my Atari ST. The manual said I could use the character to jumpstart my QFG2 charactor so I kept it around for years but could never get hold of QFG2.

HQ was definatly one of my all time favorites next to E.L.I.T.E and damocles, QFG2 is being remade, ELITE is already has an excellent remake so all I have to wait for is damocles.

And so how do YOU know about his underwear?

[RealAlaskan]

And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear. Oh well ...

I'm sure that the FBI/Secret Service/Brownshirts would have taken you into custody until they found out how you knew THAT little tidbit. And probably kept you there for a long, long time, once they did find out. Only those who are closest to him (wink wink, nudge nudge) are supposed to know.

Re:And so how do YOU know about his underwear?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only those who are closest to him (wink wink, nudge nudge) are supposed to know.

Or closeted next to him, perhaps?

KQ

[_ph1ux_]

I remember playing kings quest way back when - having to load different floppies etc...

That game got me so hooked on computer games i still cant pull myself away.

hmmm.... maybe this isnt a good thing. It's like having nostalgia for my first hit off Whitney's crack pipe. oh wait, she's too rich for crack - and I'm too poor for games these days.

Re:KQ

[garcia]

Whiney wasn't smoking crack, she was just tall...

yes, tall also means stoned although she was obviously too baked to realize that...

Remember kids, Whitney says crack is crap!

Isn't it a little late for Wal-Mart to back down?

[Scooby Snacks]

I mean, the damage is already done. These were sale prices from a week ago. They got them removed. (Well, several big-name retailers did.) Then, they decide to give it a go to try to find out who did it. FatWallet showed some backbone, so Wal-Mart backed down and decided to cut their losses rather than have this go to court.

Pardon me, but I don't think that Wal-Mart's "seen the light" or become a good guy in this regard.

Wal-Mart's Bluff

[vaguelyamused]

One wonders if Wal-Mart's bluff on this was simply a ploy to have the prices taken down before the sale and while planning all along to back down later. Obviously they accomplished their goal, getting the prices taken down from the site before the sale, and even if FatWallet hadn't fired back they would have no reason to expend legal effort and expense of pursuing their copyright claim any further. Obviously the information in question is no longer of any use to anyone.

It would probably cost Wal-Mart less to just pay FatWallet's legal costs rather than go to court. In the end it seems even if FatWallet wins the legal battle they still have lost the war. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Wal-Mart does the same thing next year supposing FatWallet posts their sale prices early again.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[Anonvmous Coward]

"One wonders if Wal-Mart's bluff on this was simply a ploy to have the prices taken down before the sale and while planning all along to back down later."

If that's true, then they shot themselves in the foot. When the next major retail holiday rolls around, nobody (including FatWallet) will be inclined to take anything down.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[vaguelyamused]

That maybe true, maybe not, if they can get a federal court to grant an injunction against the site by trying to charge them with DMCA again they will be required to take the prices down. If they settle with FatWallet this year the case will not enter case law as there is no judgement and they may still be able to get an injunction on the same grounds as the subpoena this year. Even if they don't get an injunction any site that is threatened by Wal-Mart and their huge legal department may be advised by their own lawyers to take down the info until the case is settled. And Wal-Mart wins again.

Hopefully you are right and someone stands up to them next year, we'll see.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[StevenMaurer]

Everything you said was true, except for the last part. If it happens again next year they probably won't be able to pull the same stunt.

Whatever that judge is who allowed the subpeona to go through on this patently bogus claim must be pretty red-faced right about now. As news of these kinds of shenanigans gets out into the wider legal community, you'll likely start seeing fewer attempts, because judges can come down pretty hard on frivolous lawsuits.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[CerebusUS]

Everyone is missing this rather crucial point:

Walmart never backed downs about the prices, they backed down on their demands for FatWallet to turn over the names of the people who posted the prices.

While that implies that they didn't have grounds for a DMCA claim, it doesn't prove it.

If FatWallet backs down from their countersuit, the whole thing could just happen again next year. No precedent will have been set.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[nyseal]

Just curious.....could FatWallet.com just have asked for a summary judgement PRIOR to removing the data from their website? It probably would've lasted at least a week in the courts anyhow.

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[innocent_white_lamb]

It would probably cost Wal-Mart less to just pay FatWallet's legal costs rather than go to court.

I think there is more to it than this. Or there damn well should be.

Somebody at Walmart swore under penalty of perjury that they owned the copyright to something that they now admit they don't own the copyright to.

That somebody should be going to jail for a long time; the courts view wilful perjury as a very serious offence.

So where's the sheriff and when will the raid on Walmart's corporate office begin so everyone can see the example of what happens when you abuse this draconian law in a deliberately fraudulent manner?

Re:Wal-Mart's Bluff

[91degrees]

Somebody at Walmart swore under penalty of perjury that they owned the copyright to something that they now admit they don't own the copyright to.

Yes. It seems that the "I swear under penalty of perjury" statement is used so regularly that the lawyers have forgetten that it isn't just a meaningless informal comment along the lines of "Hope you're all well".

I for one would love to see a lawyer suffer the "penalty for perjury". It might make them a little more careful before sending out baseless legal threats.

DVD

[sulli]

We see ... some footage of the Red Hat and VA Linux IPO's.

oops.

I love Mplayer

[SquadBoy]

and this will finally allow me to kill my Wife's Win 2k partition. She likes to watch Korean broadcasts on line. In any case if you are using Debian see this

Re:I love Mplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

"and this will finally allow me to kill my Wife"

Eeek!

(I wonder if carnivore picked this one up).

Mainstream distros to include MPlayer?

[Chuck Chunder]

They may as well just wire all their money directly to MS, Apple and their lawyers.

Unless of course you're talking about distributing it without the codecs, in which case it's useless anyway. If people have to hunt down the codecs they may as well grab the most recent version of the software while their at it.

Re:Mainstream distros to include MPlayer?

[Per Wigren]

Mplayer can already play most files without using external win32-codecs... The only (significant) codecs that needs win32-codecs are RealPlayer, Sorenson v3 and WMV9... It already has native code to play all mpeg4/divx-files and wmv7/8 which is what 98% of all (.avi/.asf/.wmv) flicks on the net use anyway... And they are working on native support for both WMV9 and Sorenson v3...

Re:Mainstream distros to include MPlayer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hunt where? They're on the MPlayer site...go get them.

Re:Mainstream distros to include MPlayer?

[sparrow_hawk]

Would it work (hypothetically, IANAL, & other misc. caveats) to distribute the OSS stuff on the CD with a convenient graphical tool to install the proprietary stuff... y'know, "hit this button to install WMA codec", which then goes and downloads the CVS version, the codecs, does whatever manipulations it takes to put it in usable form, and installs it? In essence it automates what you would already do?

Re:Mainstream distros to include MPlayer?

[Bobulusman]

Cool. I may just have to download it and install it. I'm still a newbie to Linux, so I don't know these things yet.

P.S. That is a really great sig. If the reply to this wasn't under it, it would be hard to tell it from the real thing.

netflix queue

[dirvish]

I just added Revolution OS to the top of my Netflix rental queue. This may be the first slashdotting of a movie rental. I imagine it could be a while before it becomes available...unless they have a lot of copies.

From the Tierra FAQ...

[Soulfader]

Isn't this illegal? Are Sierra Aware of your activities?
This is a tricky issue that could be, and already has been, argued to death on both sides. The answer is, nobody really knows. Either way, we have openly stated that we will shut our project down at any time. Sierra, along with many game developers, are aware of the projects existence, yet have refrained from contacting us. We take this as reserved acceptance. Overall, we have remained very respectful to Sierra, and only want to aid in increasing their sales and revive an interest in their products.

This sounds like my strategy at work when testing new things. "If I don't ask, he can't say no." =)

Seriously, though, this is cool. My wife loves all of those games--even their mention is enough to spark a half hour nostalgia session about the good ol' Amiga gaming days. Methinks I shall have to surreptitiously put this on her machine at home...

Re:From the Tierra FAQ...

[Mr. Sketch]

If I don't ask, he can't say no.

This sounds like the philosophy at my previous company: Better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.

Any news on the rest of the FatWallet case?

[CarlDenny]

Are they still countersuing Walmart for damages, purgery, anything?

This is not a win unless they are hurt for their actions. They still kept FatWallet from getting the word out. They've still used the DMCA to stifle legitimate works. And it hasn't cost them a thing.

Re:Any news on the rest of the FatWallet case?

[orthogonal]

Are they still countersuing Walmart for damages, purgery, anything?

Walmart forced FatWallet to vomit? Man, that's harsh.

Re:Any news on the rest of the FatWallet case?

[Anonymous Coward]

not true. I'm sure WalMart's lawyers overcharged them.

Ask and ye shall receive...

[Soulfader]

Once they're finished, anyway. =)

mplayer

[wray]

WOW! mplayer is doing some seriously wonderful work. Now, with sorensen (1 and 3) codecs, and WMP/WMA codecs, the reasons for havin to boot to windows are diminishing greatly. ...Now if only Intuit would port Quicken, that is last great frontier.

Before someone mentions it, I know about Kapital and gnucash, they just generally don't connect to the banks, and have all the necessary features, but they're great if they meet your needs. They just don't meet mine yet. I also know about crossover office -- but I don't want to pay more money, when I already have windows.

Anyway, here's hoping Intuit ports their bread and butter.

Perjury?

[Phanatic1a]

So what happens to Wal-Mart now that they've submitted the claim that their prices were protected by copyright under penalty of perjury? Surely even though they've withdrawn the claim, they don't get to "take back" the fact that they perjured themselves?

Re:Perjury?

[racerx509]

It just means that no one else can sell an Land/Sea RC Camouflage toy for $58.88.

Aztec

[Idarubicin]

What I want is C-64 style Aztec.

Gee, if I wanted that, I'd dust off my C-64 and play. They built those things solidly...nearly two decades, and I've had to replace the power supply brick. And that's it. Granted, use has tapered off significantly over the last decade, and the joysticks that have suffered from heavy usage need replacement, but still...

There's something to be said for avoiding the hard drive as a point of failure.

Re:Aztec

[stratjakt]

I know the little buffer chips on the joystick ports had a tendency to fry themselves at will.

It was an easy fix, but still. I loved my 64, but it wasn't without its issues.

I killed about a dozen 1541s. By killed, I mean they were poorly designed with an internal power supply and would easily overheat and meltdown if you used it for more than a few hours at a time. The 1541-II and 1571 were better, but it was still a little late.

As an aside, I don't remember Kings Quest ever being a C64 game in the first place.

Re:Aztec

[Mitchell Mebane]

Geez, you're lucky... I've hacked together two working ones from a dozen of them, and even they aren't perfect... one is already dead, and the other lost the SID chip.

WMV 9

[Anonymous Coward]

WMV 9 support! Porn addicts of slashdot rejoice!

Mplayer and Codecs -.MOV quicktime etc.....

[Nex6]

using RH8:

and apt4rpm i was able to get .mov and all the movie media file to work in mplayer.

using apt-get install MPLAYER and ALL its plugins including transcode.

then:

apt-get install xmms*
## this will install xmms and all its plugins which include the codecs that will make the sound work for the quicktime movies.

have fun.....

Nex6

Kings Quest

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have Kings Quest V and VI on cd as well as II on diskette. They really don't make games like that anymore, but even if they did I probably wouldn't play them. I have other things to do nowadays, but if you have a lot of time on your hands grab a copy and enjoy.

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wife's Win2k partition kills YOU!

ENOUGH with the freedom talk!

[Travoltus]

Freedom is for kooks.

If you aren't doing anything wrong, why are you afraid of people knowing what you're doing? We need total information awareness - privacy is only really NECESSARY for criminals.

You've got Monday Night Football. You've got your cheetos. You've even got your lagermeister. What more 'freedoms' do you need?

Big Brother is going to save us from the terrorists! I'll gladly sacrifice freedom for that!

Long live Ashcroft!

(moderators: please spot the sarcasm in this post.)

Re:ENOUGH with the freedom talk!

[fferreres]

No, the problem is WHO accesses that information based on WHAT CRITERIA. "Total information awareness" for whom? I agree we need that, but in a fair way. For instance, a good place to start in making all income statements and finantial information about everyone publicly available. No more undisclosed owners. Everyone should be able to tell exactly who owns what, and who that "what" owns in a serial chain.

Until then, it's just "Total information control" from some bozos that may use it for whatever means they feel like in addition than national security.

The real truth of all this my naive friend is that terrorist will easily hide themselves while every mayor mom and dad and little company X or Y will be disclosing all their information to "the goverment" (and we do know these don't run the US) while the terrorist keep all their security glad thanking the US laws for giving americans a false sense of security.

Terrorist only need to use a one time pad to pass a message and our goverment can't do anything to stop them.

Re:ENOUGH with the freedom talk!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I can spot the sarcasm. But, why not take the following seriously:

We need total information awareness - privacy is only really NECESSARY for criminals.

If we indeed had total information awareness, then we become a "naked" society. When you find out how many "good citizens" are in fact trading their music collections, or breaking the speed limit, or commiting sodomy, or smoking marijuana, or reading slashdot on company time, then maybe these things would no longer be illegal (except maybe the last :-), and only the real criminals (e.g., those who kill) would be pursued. Furthermore, you could know what your president or senator was doing at any given time, so no more backdoor deals: completely transparent politics. Complete lack of privacy won't happen, but it could bring some very positive results.

MPlayer on Mac OSX

[n8_f]

For Mac users, you have to check out MPlayerOSX. This is my first time using MPlayer and it is awesome! Much better than vlc or the 3ivx decoder, performance is great on my G3/400. Finally, I can watch divxs with WMA audio tracks on my Mac!
It just doesn't seem fair how easy it is: no compiling, no tweaking, just install the package and it works. Still has some polishing (switching out of full screen stops the movie), but the source is all there. A must have.

Re:MPlayer on Mac OSX

[Ian Pointer]

You've just made my day :-). I've been wondering how I was going to play my AVI files on my shiny new iBook. I can now watch Cowboy Bebop on the flight home. Hurrah!

Re:MPlayer on Mac OSX

[benwaggoner]

Yeah. X11 performance on MacOS X is really lousy, so having a Cocoa version of MPlayer helps a LOT.

I've found that it can decode at least WMV7 somehow, but I'm not sure how it does that. Repurposing the PPC WMP code? A clean-room decoder?

I assume WM9 support in MPlayer support is some ways off for non x86 platforms. Microsoft is working on a MacOS X WM9 player, of course.

Re:MPlayer on Mac OSX

[n8_f]

My understanding is that only the Sorenson v3 and WM9 video formats require external libraries (dlls; they aren't supported on the Mac). The rest of the video formats have been reverse engineered and are in the source code, so they transfer to any platform you can compile on. And the MPlayer guys are trying to remove the external dependencies for those formats, too.

Re:MPlayer on Mac OSX

[benwaggoner]

Well, they certainly should hit up the Sorenson guys about this. They didn't mind the SV1/2 decoder support in past versions, so might be willing to provide some information for a SV3 decoder as well.

Revolution OS in Australia?

[Zeddicus_Z]

Does anyone know where we can purchase Revolution OS in Australia? I dont want to purchase from an overseas retailer, and both ChaosDVD.com.au and Ezydvd.com.au dont want anything to do with it.

Back in the time of SOVIET RUSSIA

[Stoutlimb]

Back in the time of SOVIET RUSSIA, America stood for something.

Plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only we could get MPlayer to act as a plugin for Moz.

Re:Plugins

[DarknessInBlindingLi]

Actually you can: http://www.webfreetv.com/linux/

IAO

[Jonny Ringo]

Are friends at 2600 has a good quick article about "Total Information Awareness" and who is behind the department. This is Big government brought to you by Bush.

Re:IAO

[Jonny Ringo]

You know I meant "Our friends" right? I know someone here will ream me for that one.

Re:IAO

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm voting Green in 2004! takethepledge [takethepledge.com]

Oh great, now Bush is going to be back for another term...

MPlayer and recent (evil) legislation

[JessLeah]

MPlayer is a great project. I was absolutely astonished when I first downloaded it and played with its many features. But I'm terrified that any day now, They (you know, MS or Sorenson or Real or the RIAA or the MPAA or possibly all five) are going to slap the MPlayer guys with a lawsuit (yes, MPlayer HQ is in, what, Hungary? But look at what happened to our friend Skylarov (sp.?) in Russia) and b3wm, down goes the project, and it's officially verboten in the US (like DeCSS).

How will they sue the MPlayer people? Simple. They could sue under the anti-reverse-engineering clause of the DMCA. Or they could employ any number of other recent pro-corporate laws which are slowly making it illegal to reverse-engineer anything, even if it's necessary for you to do your work. (Remember, there is STILL no legal and MPAA-approved solution for playing your DVDs in Linux (let alone more obscure OSes like FreeBSD or OpenBSD)-- unless, of course, you count hooking up the output of your set-top DVD player into the video input of your TV tuner card...

Personally, I don't forsee any 'mainstream' Linux dists (if there really is such a thing in terms of desktop use ;) ) including MPlayer any time soon, for fear of being named as co-defendants in a possibly gruesome lawsuit...

Remember: MPlayer was created using reverse engineering. The SPA/MPAA/RIAA/MS/etc. folks are really really pushing (and paying off congresspeople, naturally) to make reverse engineering a criminal offense. It may already be... this is a dangerous area, a legal powder-keg waiting to go off.

At BEST, MPlayer will be a "gray market" program for the forseeable future-- if not forever. Again, yes, I love it-- but I worry for it. More properly, I worry for its creators...

Re:MPlayer and recent (evil) legislation

[zztzed]

First, they only got Sklyarov when he set foot on US soil.

Second, as I understand it, MPlayer uses the Win32 DLLs for playback just as WMP/QT/whatever-else does. The only way it could really be considered reverse engineering is if the APIs weren't published.

I'd say it's unlikely that anyone would try cracking down on MPlayer under the pretense of the DMCA, because it's not actually circumventing any access control mechanisms ... but just like the majority of Slashdot's 600k+ other users, IANAL. But even so I have a hard time seeing how even the best lawyers could spin this to make it look like they're actually violating the DMCA. But maybe I'm just naive.

Re:MPlayer and recent (evil) legislation

[TrancePhreak]

You know too much, watch out or you may be the next target.... ;)

Nice post....kthxbye.

Re:MPlayer and recent (evil) legislation

[JessLeah]

The way MPlayer development seems to progress is:

STEP 1: There is no support for codex X.
STEP 2: They add DLL support for codec X.
STEP 3: After a good amount of time spent reverse-engineering, they add native support for codec X.

It's the step 3 that's gonna really get them in trouble. Codecs only remain "DLL-only" in MPlayer for so long. After a time, the MPlayer guys figure out how to reverse-engineer the codec-- or someone else does, and the MPlayer guys adapt the code to their project...

Heck, the EULA for many of these DLLs may say "Only on approved operating systems", who knows... no one reads the things. Not even me. ;)

TIPS may not be dead yet...

[Platinum Dragon]

...only renamed.

This is the relevant section that supposedly eliminated TIPS:

SEC. 880. PROHIBITION OF THE TERRORISM INFORMATION AND PREVENTION SYSTEM.
Any and all activities of the Federal Government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) are hereby prohibited.

All it does is prohibit the proposed program under the Citizen Corps known as TIPS. A strict reading of the language could leave a way to revive the program under a different name.

It may seem a bit legalistic and paranoid, but legalities like that are precisely how unpalatable programs are implemented anyway.

Re:TIPS may not be dead yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't they then have to re-enact it via a new law?

*bzzt*

[commodoresloat]

Ummm, right wing pistol packing rabbis are the greatest defenders of the Bill of Rights? Man we're in serious trouble. Guess what people -- there's and NRA man in the white house, and another as Atty General; the second amendment is not the part of the Bill of Rights under real attack these days.

Re:*bzzt*

[pete-classic]

right wing pistol packing rabbis

Perhaps this is some usage of the term "right wing" I'm not familiar with. Does it mean someone who can read and comprehend the English language?

And why rabbis? I don't happen to know the percentage of the members of the JPFO that are rabbis, but I think that it is clear that they aren't the majority. I can't think of any reason you would refer specifically to rabbis that reflects well on you.

there's and NRA man in the white house

Who has done more harm than good to the Bill of Rights. Granted, it is at the will of the people, and he has been handed difficult times (or at least times when it is easy and popular to do the wrong thing for freedom).

And the NRA, frankly, is way off target (if you'll forgive the pun). First, their (our, I am a member) single minded focus on the second amendment is, IMHO, misguided. More importantly, their willingness to barter with our freedoms hardly makes them true defenders of our rights, in fact it would be generous to say that they defend the status quo.

the second amendment is not the part of the Bill of Rights under real attack these days

The second amendment is very much under attack. I may not bear arms at all in the municipality in which I live. What does "infringe" mean in your language?

-Peter

Re:*bzzt*

[commodoresloat]

The second amendment is very much under attack. I may not bear arms at all in the municipality in which I live

Where is that, fucking London? I live in a "liberal" state and I'm pretty sure you could practically pack a surface to air missile and walk down the street without fear (if you're white that is). But what specific threat to the 2nd amendment do you see, besides the fact that you can't pack heat in Vermont or wherever the hell you're talking about? And even in most of those places, less than a week of paperwork and you can have a fucking arsenal in a glass case in your living room.

Look, I support gun ownership and I am pro-2nd amendment, but I am far more worried about losing my right to speak my mind or my right to keep to myself than I am of losing my right to stockpile automatic weapons.

Re:*bzzt*

[nathanm]

Look, I support gun ownership and I am pro-2nd amendment, but I am far more worried about losing my right to speak my mind or my right to keep to myself than I am of losing my right to stockpile automatic weapons.

I'm worried about losing any rights protected by the Constitution & its amendments. However, the 2nd Amendment is the one that lets us keep the means to protect the rest of our rights.

Re:*bzzt*

[commodoresloat]

how does owning a gun help you protect your rights? Do you really expect to wave it at your elected officials when you disapprove of their policies? The idea of gun-toting patriots saving America from its government is romantic hogwash. Americans like guns because they're fun to shoot and because they make us feel more powerful, not because we're going to brandish them at John Ashcroft. Sometimes they make an important symbolic statement - as when the Black Panthers marched into the state capitol armed like a commando unit - but the government has the means to crush any real armed resistance.

They didn't plan this

[Xandar01]

It seems to me that the only reason Wal-Mart backed down was after FatWallet started a counter suit. Why did FatWallet start a counter suit? WalMart got greedy with power (from the DMCA) and started to demand information from FatWallet. FalWellet was just trying to defend its customer's privacy.

WalMart did get its prices removed, but it was a one trick pony.

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Carnivore worries about YOU!

WalMart got what IT WANTED!

[Newer Guy]

WalMart got what IT WANTED! It managed to throw its corporate weight around and got its prices removed from FatWallet's web site. Now that the sale's long OVER WalMart relents??!! I don't think so... How do you spell B O Y C O T T ?

Re: WalMart got what IT WANTED!

[BlueFashoo]

T A R G E T

and the people are cleaner too!

Re: WalMart got what IT WANTED!

[Erit]

B-O-Y-C-O-T-T

Re: WalMart got what IT WANTED!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you all fail to understand, or even come close to grasping, is two very important things here:

1st, Wal-Mart was in the RIGHT here. That information was leaked to a third party, and falls under numerous NDA agreements Wal-Mart had in force at the time. You can cry about the DMCA all you want, it will do you no good. Wal-Mart won, and did it with a smile.

2nd, Wal-Mart could buy and sell Fatwallet and those other sites many, many, MANY times over. If Wal-Mart wanted to pursue this, they would bury this site with less effort than it takes to press an elevator button.

In case you have lived in a cave for the past few years, Wal-Mart is big, really big, really, really big.

When entire towns cannot stop Wal-Mart from doing what it wants to do, how in the WORLD do you think some nobody freebie site operator is going to stop them?

Wake up and smell the coffee (at your local Wal-Mart), you aren't playing with some script kiddie here folks, you are playing with the big guys and they KNOW how to win.

Re: WalMart got what IT WANTED!

[daveisoverlord]

How do you spell B O Y C O T T ?

I spell it W-A-S-T-E O-F T-I-M-E.

What was the last successful boycott of a company the size of Walmart?

I agree with your sentiment - I'd love to see FatWallet pursue their claim. But I hate the slashherd mentality always rushing to boycott something. Choose another route to protest because boycotts simply do not work anymore.

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

MPlayer includes Linux distro!

Total Poindexter Awareness

[Jeremy Erwin]

Call John Poindexter at his home:1-301-424-6613.

Tell him how you really feel by sending him a letter:

John M. and Linda Poindexter
10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850

source 1

source 2

MPLAYER port to GSTREAMER????

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if anyone is working on harmonizing Mplayer with gstreamer, and for that matter xine and xmms?

Gstreamer?

(Gstreamer is an open-source project that has produced a development framework for creating applications like media players, video editors, streaming media broadcasters and so on.)

It would, of course, be really nice to have harmony in the free software world by integrating the Mplayer codecs into this framework.

Mplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tried to add mplayer to my IE favorites. (to get later, and yes, I use IE at the moment.) It crashes upon attempting this.

Curioser and curioser...

Damn DMCA

[unterderbrucke]

This legislation has been abused like a village bicycle!

Why the heck does it still exist? You know its bad, I know its bad, if you explain it to a regular joe, he will know it is bad.

Whats happening? Anyone who wants someone else on the internet to shut up, uses DMCA.

Is it too broad? Heck yeah! Are lawyers using it whenever they can? Sure, /. is full of stories like that. Needless to say fatwallet is an interesting concept that deservers a fighting chance. I am happy that they decided to show spine. Real spine like that is seriously lacking these days.

I really hope that fatwallet has a clued-in lawyer for this. I hope that the judge will be half as clued-in as the above mentioned lawyer. I hope fatwallet wins fat damages.

I mean, Fat damages, damages so fat, next time greedy_company_01 comes to their lawyers crying, the lawyers instead of saying "yes sir, straight away sir, we will use DMCA sir" will say "erm, you have absolutely no case whatsoever, if you want to continue legal action, this will cost you way more than its costing you now"

Lawyers aint cheap and when court orders someone to pay for the damages/legal costs, it aint cheap.
Thus, one of the great ways to defeat DMCA absue in the future is to make it costly for those idiots who pull out DMCA whenever they think they are loosing a few cents to competition/someone smarter.

So, in conclusion of my long-winded post, OG OG fatwallet's lawyer! DIE DMCA, DIE! ;)

Re: Damn DMCA

[Black Parrot]

> This legislation has been abused like a village bicycle!

Heh. My village had a girl nicknamed 'bicycle', for reasons that shouldn't need explaining.

Roosevelt?

[Galvatron]

Would this be the Roosevelt that forbade private citizens from owning gold, and put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps? Not to mention the fact that he was the first (and now only) president to violate the tradition of stepping down after two terms, to aviod creating a massive cult of personality. FDR actively sought this, and indeed he switched running mates every four years, because he didn't want anyone under him to get too powerful or well known.

Or are you talking about Teddy? If the latter, I don't really remember him doing anything to promote freedom, except perhaps his whole trust busting thing.

Re:Roosevelt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant Teddy... Guy basically delayed the corporate takeover of America.

Re:Roosevelt?

[coaxial]

Not to mention the fact that he was the first (and now only) president to violate the tradition of stepping down after two terms

There was nothing illegal about it. We were in a real war, not some fearmongering like today. He was insanely popular, and is the the greatest modern president this country has ever had.

You were right to attack him for the internment camps. That was wrong, and completly indefenseable, but to bring up >2 terms is just stupid. You don't think the republicans would have run a alzhemer's ravaged Reagan a third time if the could have? Of course the would have.

Re:Roosevelt?

[Galvatron]

Okay, first a question: What does "greatest modern president this country has ever had" mean? The qualifier "modern" seems at odds with the "ever had" bit. Regardless, I disagree with you, I think FDR did tremendous harm with his policies. FDR knew little about economics, and latched on to Keynesian economics because it was in vogue at the time, and gave hope to the American people. Economies have a tendancy to right themselves, so no one can ever say for certain if FDR legthened or shortened the Great Depression, but my personal belief is that he lengthened it. As for WWII, there is evidence that FDR knew about the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor and deliberately witheld that information to involve America in the war. Granted, that is controversial. What is not controversial is that he kept retained all authority until he died. As the war in Europe moved toward a conclusion, FDR's declining faculties rendered him unable to perceive the threat posed by the USSR. Had FDR delegated his authority as he became incompetent, the US could driven all the way to Berlin, denying the Soviets a larger portion of Germany.

Anyway, returning to our original point, he should have stepped down, not because of whether or not he was a good president, but because stepping down after two terms is the right thing to do. George Washington was also tremendously popular, and the fledgling United States was fearful of many threats. However, he stepped down, precisely because he realized that it is dangerous, in a democracy, for any one person to hold onto power for too long. People start becoming loyal to the leader, rather than to the system as a whole. America's tradition of not letting one leader stay in power for too long is one of the major reasons that America's government is now over 200 years old. In contrast, the French currently run by the Fifth Republic, and the Germans are on the Fourth Reich. Happily, FDR seems to have done no lasting damage (probably because he died relatively soon), and Congress has ensured that no one would ever abuse his popularity like that again.

Re:Roosevelt?

[wowbagger]

Would this be the Roosevelt that forbade private citizens from owning gold, and put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps

No, this would be the Roosevelt who established the National Parks system and who's face adorns the Mount Rushmore National Monument.

There WERE two presidents with that surname, y'know.

That "other" Roosevelt WAS a great detriment to this country's Constitution.

I don't understand...

[nomel]

"[1] WalMart claimed that their day-after-thanksgiving sale prices were copyrightable."

So now people are claiming that the DMCA can be used to protect things that *can* be copyrighted!? This is getting rediculouse. Walmart shouldn't have had to back down, the case should have been thrown out at the beginning! Well, I guess the lawyers still got payed, and they are the ones driving all of this...so they are somewhat happy.

Re:I don't understand...

[mzo23]

Ridiculous indeed. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Trademarks, copyrights and patents
are so overabused that either we won't even be able to think without paying royalties or the whole
thing will have to be torn apart and rebuilt because right now it's pretty much unsaveable.
Thank you Mickey Mouse.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is getting rediculouse.

What's getting ridiculous is people who butcher the word 'ridiculous'.

the lawyers still got payed

I'm sure they got paid, too.

This message written using the Dvorak keyboard layout.

Maybe it's time to switch to QWERTY.

Xine IS MPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, Xine was based on the MPlayer code. I'll conceeded that Xine is more comfortable for playing DVDs - but for everything else there's MPlayer. The point being that I doubt Xine has integrated MPlayer's WM9 or Sorensen support yet.

Re:Xine IS MPlayer

[fireboy1919]

Hmm...that's an interesting thought.

It would require quite a feat of temporal manipulation, considering that Xine started on August 12, 2000, and Mplayer started on September 22, 2000 (I looked at the project logs for mplayer and the registration with sourceforge for Xine).

Did you just make that up?

Re:Xine IS MPlayer

[kubrick]

It would require quite a feat of temporal manipulation

While I have no knowledge regarding the original assertion, it wouldn't have been difficult for either project to borrow code from the other at some point after they had both started. Open source, after all...

*bzzzzzzzzzzt*

[Anonymous Coward]

moron!

Re:*bzzzzzzzzzzt*

[commodoresloat]

moron!

Sorry, your post didn't come through - all that came through was your sig. Please repost.

WalMart may be legally correct...

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

This is why FatWallet needs to keep pressing the charges of the 512(f) provision and not let Wal*Mart settle out of court.

The problem is that there is at least one court case CDN vs. Kapes where the 9th Circuit ruled that lists of prices ARE copyrightable, because the merchant showed creativity in deciding their prices.

ObDisclaimer: IANAL, but WalMart's lawyers are, and with the above case as precedent, they could almost surely argue their takedown request was in good faith...

Re:WalMart may be legally correct...

[roseblood]

"the 9th Circuit ruled that lists of prices ARE copyrightable" Well, I guess I can't price my widget at 9.99$US because some other retailer used that same price already. If I were to do so I would be in violation of copyright law. That can't be true. Say it ain't so. Say it ain't so. It's too stupid to be anything but a bad joke.

Re:WalMart may be legally correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope...IANAL but...

The situations in the two cases are entirely different.

When I say "Wallmart will be charging $5.34 for X on date Y," it is the statement of a fact pure and simple. The fact of Wallmart's price is not copyrightable. There is no room for creativity or judgement in the fact.

In the coin case, there was no posted price for the item in question, only a sequence of bids and asks varying in time and place. The CDN folks had to apply creativity and judgement to distill this information down into a single price number. This price does not reflect an underlying simple fact (unlike the result of a creative measurement of the average distance to the moon). It is rather a single summary number reflecting judgement where many others could also be equally valid answers to the same basic question and different ways of getting them.

I'm sure that if in the coin case, Kapes had independently derived the same sequence of prices from the same underlying data, he would have been in the clear.

Re:WalMart may be legally correct...

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Well, I guess I can't price my widget at 9.99$US because some other retailer used that same price already. If I were to do so I would be in violation of copyright law. That can't be true. Say it ain't so. Say it ain't so. It's too stupid to be anything but a bad joke.

Again, IANAL, but I don't think you can copyright a single item price of $9.99, just like you can't copyright the word "War" or "Peace". But according to the 9th Circuit you CAN copyright a catalog with a whole bunch of prices, like you can copyright the novel "War and Peace".

Re:WalMart may be legally correct...

[Wordplay]

Yeah, but it's a different situation. CDN vs. Kapes didn't involve an absolute price list (i.e. I have this foozle, I'll sell it to you for $25). Rather, it involved a "worth" list. CDN analyzed a bunch of information and came up with an estimate of wholesale price, which Kapes offset to create his retail prices. IOW, he wasn't copying facts.

They -might- be able to make a good faith argument, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "could almost surely argue".

(obDisc: IANAL)

The Republic was fun while it lasted

[billstewart]

Now it's gone, and we're starting up the Empire....

Re:The Republic was fun while it lasted

[Wyatt Earp]

The Empire...

When did that start? When the Settlers went beyond the Treaty of Paris limits following the Revolution?

When the Army kicked out the Florida tribes?

When Lincoln shat on the Constitution during the war?

When the United States had the most powerful military on Earth and 12 million men in Service and didn't conquer Europe and Asia?

Let me know when this "Empire" starts.

Immunity didn't me he wasn't guilty, of course

[billstewart]

Immunity doesn't mean that Poindexter wasn't guilty of all the things he was charged with, including lying to Congress. It just means he can't be convicted for them, because Congress forced him to tell. That does mean that instead of the press sucking up to him and calling him "Admiral Poindexter", they should be addressing him as "Convicted Liar Poindexter" or "Disgraced Ex-Admiral Poindexter" or something along those lines.

Revenge of the Nerds

[Robber Baron]

Well fellow Slashdotters, we could very well be the Achilles heel in Poindexter's TIA program.

Re:Revenge of the Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually what may be more effective then flat out refusing to cooperate is making it run only under Windows 3.1

aww shucks...

[MP*Birdman]

here I thought it was going to be the origional version of the King's Quest games.. the one where his nose was a yellow lego block..

does anyone know if that earlier graphical version is being remade anywhere?

non x86 support?

[benwaggoner]

MPlayer does WM9 by wrapping codecs from Windows, right? I assume this means that it only supports those codecs on x86 platforms.

Anyone tried plugging an x86 emulator in there in order to get PPC, Sparc, etcetera playback? It'd be tricky, since codec performance is rather time critical. Still, only the codec itself would need to be emulated, with blitting, UI, etcetera taking place in native code.

Apple unofficially likes Crossover

[benwaggoner]

For what it's worth, I've had a number of Apple employees on the QuickTime team say nice things about Crossover. While it isn't officially supported, they're glad it's there, so Linux users can watch QuickTime stuff. They view the engineering effort of a full, official port to *NIX as WAY too big a project to be worth the results.

Sorenson says it's okay

[benwaggoner]

I've talked to folks at Sorenson who don't mind at all about decode support in MPlayer. After all, they sell ENCODERS, and having more decoders out there only grows their market.

Their new, just-announced Squeeze 3 is a really awesome encoding tool. QuickTime, Windows Media, RealMedia, Flash MX, and MPEG-4 support.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

and the developers are against binary distributions

Which matters *why* with GPL'd software?

Difficult to make generally applicable I can buy (and would personally approach by just releasing several binaries optimized for the major platforms). "The developers said no", someone needs a bitch-slap.

misleading story

[Anonymous Coward]

From the story: Linux finally seems to have a complete solution for multimedia playback. It just remains for the mainstream distros to include this gem.

WRONG! Go have a look at the supported formats on the MPlayer site. You will see that there are still unsupported formats. Linux does *not* have a complete solution for multimedia playback. I found this out when I tried to play some wmv files with MPlayer. They didn't play, so I checked the MPlayer site (earlier today) and found out that I will need to use Microsoft media player if I want it to work. Oh well. So much for windows media under Linux...

Re:misleading story

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a bit unsuccessful with a video format my camera spews out. It is SUPPOSED to be a QuickTime format, but I haven't a clue what it is. I have yet to get mPlayer to play it correctly. I can get video to play right OR audio to play right, but not at the same time. aKtion!, on the other hand, plays it very nicely, though there is the slight audio/video sychronization issue due to the arts sound server buffer (mine is set to super huge). Even though there is a little work for the mPlayer folks, I like it a lot. Now, I just need to get it to open streams. Maybe I'll look into it this weekend...

mPlayer may not play everthing, but it plays a heck of a lot more formats than other media players. I am going to stick with it for a while and see how it performs, but so far I have been pleased. Kudos to the mPlayer team for their hard work!

FYI: RPMfind.net has binaries for a few Linux distros. Look out for those dependencies!

zaurus English hack

[dudifeuer]

Did anyone read this???

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6799894707.ht ml

Do we really need a hacked English version if Sharp is going to release an English version in January??

Yup. They could press it.

[mindstrm]

Then Wal-Mart could have it's lawyers dig up the *appropriate* laws regarding publishing stolen trade-secret information, and take them through a cheese grater.

Let's remember.. in this case, the DMCA was not the right tool to use.. but that doesn't mean the prices shouldn't have been taken down.

Re:Yup. They could press it.

[WNight]

Bullshit it doesn't. There's no concievable reason (benefit to society) why those prices should be secret, nor any legal basis for making them so.

The whole idea of capitalism is that people have total knowledge. They know how the items people are selling relate to each other, and they know the prices beforehand so that they can pick the best.

Both of these (consumer-run product info sites and pricing-list sites) are things that businesses dislike, precisely because they don't want to actually compete, they want guaranteed revenue. An educated consumer will probably be a violation of the law in a few years.

Re:In Soviet Russia... -- MOD PARENT BACK UP

[Anonymous Coward]

You fuckers... That was funny!!
That IS an option....

dammit.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

ANSWER is a front for the WWP, a rather awful authoritarian state capitalist bunch.

Remove the $HOME/.mplayer directory

[msobkow]

I got burnt by this too. Shut down MPlayer. Remove the .mplayer subdirectory (rm -Rf $HOME/.mplayer). Restart MPlayer, and it recreates the .mplayer settings with default values.

Re:Remove the $HOME/.mplayer directory

[byron150]

Kudos to you. If I had mod points I would spend them all on you. It is the first time in a very long time that I've seen someone offer a valid positive technical solution to a problem somebody has listed here. I realize that this is supposed to be a public forum to discuss the pro's and con's of the "news" posted here but it's also nice to see someone not derided for their lack of knowledge, called a n00b or told to RTFM.

What??? Oh sorry got warm fuzzies there for a second. No don't worry back to my usual cynical self, carry on, carry on.

Re:NEED HELP

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried to cherish my balls in the name of the .test community?

yeah!

[onShore_Jake]

Let this be a lesson to those who would use the DMCA to unjustly intimidate websites into removing content.

Yeah! They will never forget the lesson that.. uh... well the consequences to wal-mart were... uh.... Well the next person will know that if they try to do this they will have to... NOTHING!

How did we let it happen?

[stokes]

To say we "let" it happen implies we really have any say. Our last presidential election was a farce; despite lacking the majority vote, Bush was elected. If the right to select the President can be taken from the American people, the pruning of smaller and less obvious civil liberties is a trivial undertaking.

Ogle at 500MHz

[anonymous cupboard]

I have Ogle running on my 500MHz P3 Dell notebook without problems. The graphics card is an ATI Mobility P, which is sloooooowwwwww....

I recompiled Ogle plus the libraries like libdvdread and dvdcss to ensure the code was P3 optimised, installed the ATI x driver from source forge (with the xvideo extensions) and the performance is as good as PowerDVD under Win98 (no jumps). The kernel is RH 2.4.18-18.8 with the low latency stuff enabled.

If only they would fix the GUI, then I would be very happy.

Mutually Assured Worrying

[Anonymous Coward]

We worry about the government worrying about us.

Walmart

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go, Wal-Mart, for standing up against the mean ol' Microsoft!
Way to go, FatWallet, for standing up against the mean ol' Wal-Mart!
Way to go, Slashdot Critic, for standing up against the mean ol' FatWallet!
Way to go, Moderator, for standing up against the mean ol' Slashdot Critic!
Way to go, Microsoft, for... are you hiring?

Ha ha ha yes this is a troll and a laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, locked out doubleclick in my hosts file sorry guys but I don't support these jerks nor should you.

Not Found
The requested URL /blahblahblah was not found on this server.

Apache/2.0.43 Server at ad.doubleclick.net Port 80

Bullshit!

[Newer Guy]

I used to work for a radio station that was owned by a newspaper and located in their building. The advertising circulars used to come in on big pallets WEEKS before they were to be inserted into the Sunday papers. They used to leave the pallets in the garage where most ANYONE could look at them! I'll wager that literally hundreds of papers do the same thing with their circulars. WalMart and any other advertiser has to be pretty freaking naive if they think that they should have any expectation of privacy whatsoever! ....and, don't kid yourself, THEY KNOW IT TOO!!!!!

Remember the words of James Madison

[PhilHibbs]

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

Netflix and MPlayer...

[wowbagger]

First: Netflix BAD! Netflix SPAMS! NO USE NETFLIX!

Netflix has a history of spamming, and when contacted about the spamming does the spammy thing of listwashing the complainer. Obviously, you need to make your own choice, and if you choose to support a known spammer that is your right, but I strongly suggest that nobody use Netflix.

Second: Mplayer.

First of all, their site uses Mystery Meat Navigation - You don't know what the buttons do until you mouse over them (at least, you don't if you don't have Javascript on). I would have hoped for better from a FOSS project.

Second of all, unless I am mistaken (which I could very well be) MPlayer uses Microsoft DLL's and Wine to play WMAs. Thus the answer to "Why don't the major distro's include MPlayer" - doing so would involve distributing Microsoft copyrighted material, and would therefor make the distro Non-Free (as well as getting the distro vender targeted for termination by the Microsoft lawyer-drones).

So.... confused...

[srussell]

Wal-mart sells PCs with Linux pre-installed... so they're good, right?

But, they're threatening people with the DMCA... so they're bad, right?

Augh!

alarming statistics

[slide-rule]

And I was hoping to join up and inform them that John Ashcroft wears women's underwear.

Studies show that about half the population of earth wear women's underwear. Sheesh, talking about making a big thing out of ... [checks statistics]. Err... right. nevermind. ;-)

Mplayer + sorenson and WMP is a joke

[pyite69]

No distro will be able to include this support,
since it is not a proper GPL solution.

They have to hack in copyrighted, proprietary
DLLs to make this work. No distribution will be
able to get the rights to distribute this stuff.

Remember, if it's not open source... it's CRAP.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's still reading this, mod Happy go Lucky's comment up -- unlike its parent, he actually knows a couple things about american history and isn't just spouting me-too rhetoric.

You just don't get it.

[mindstrm]

In retail, sale prices are designed to attract customers. Future pricing is SECRET. Yes, the store releases sale prices ahead of time, but you generally don't advertise that "in 3 weeks, such-and-such will be on sale", becuase doing so would be counterproductive. It would both tip off your competitors, as well as detract from current sales of the item.

Whether it's pricing or not means nothing. This could be any kind of publication by any entity that was not supposed to be released yet.

Businesses may dislike consumer pricing sites, for sure, but that's not what this is about.. this is about STOLEN INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH ANY LEGAL CHANNELS.

Re:You just don't get it.

[WNight]

Stolen Information, blah, blah, blah. Did anyone burst in with a gun and take it from the person who compiled the list, or sneak in at night and open the safe? No, it was leaked. Big difference.

As much as I'd like the government to pass a ton of laws and crack down on people who gossip about me, using *STOLEN INFORMATION*, it's still a stupid idea. If you tell someone something, they can pass it on. It's the way the world works. Deal with it instead of advocating a bunch of legal measures to protect stupid companies from themselves.

Should we even care? Hell no. It's not like it'd be impossible to do business if secrets like this always leaked. It'd mean that they wouldn't plan this sort of thing as far in advance and maybe they'd stop having such big sales, instead having a more consistent price. But if they can't learn the lesson that children do, that secrets are hard to keep if you tell them to even one person, maybe they do deserve to die out.

Think about that before you go on about ILLEGAL INFORMATION!

Re:In Soviet Russia... -- MOD PARENT BACK UP

[Anonymous Coward]

stop MODDING DOWN great HUMOR, 'TARDS!

Last Post!

[alpg]

As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into
smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different
in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting
norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a
computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by
IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish
standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original
standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan
allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive
innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and
imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven
images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies
on the austerity of the word.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988

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