Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: TIPS, FatWallet, MPlayer
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."
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/
Not quite. Mplayer is a good piece of software, but in order to be work at full it needs proprietary, limited distributable codecs.
using RH8:
.mov and all the movie media file to work in mplayer.
and apt4rpm i was able to get
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
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.
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...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
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.
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.
*shrug*
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
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.
.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.
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
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.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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.
A solution to the problem with music today
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.
Yeah. Good times, good times.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
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.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
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.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Actually you can: http://www.webfreetv.com/linux/
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).
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
I write in my journal