What a grumpy asshole
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Interesting
If you look for reasons to be unhappy with ANYTHING, you'll find them. Why not focus on what's good and what needs to be improved? "This is shit and too big of a pain in the ass to screw with" isn't a particularly exacting or insightful analysis.
OS X + Fink = bliss
by
IvyMike
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.
And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".
This also applies to XMMS
by
Avumede
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I've been saying the same things about skinnable interfaces for a while now. I've never found one that is acceptable. Look at xmms and winamp skins. I'd say 70% are just plain ugly, 30% are good to beautify, and 100% (as far as I've seen) are unusable. When they have text at all, they have tiny unreadable fonts. They have buttons that don't look like buttons, and they are bitmapped so you can't resize it like a normal app.
When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.
mplayer rocks!
by
John+Zero
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is a fact: mplayer just rocks!
It can play just about ANY video file. And it does hell of a job playing! You can switch to fullscreen/back in an instant, even do panning-resizing on the fly (good for viewing 9:16 videos on 3:4 screen), adjust audio/video sync with a key, etc.
Ever tried using windows players? How about playing "bad" avi files, containing no indexes? Media Player, RealOne player all failed on those (well, they do play it, but you can't really seek, or if you can, it's fkkin slow).
Oh, and check that QuickTime player for Windows. It's slow, it's lame, it flickers, you can't resize it or do fullscreen.
I can't say much about mplayer's GUI, because I don't use it, but even that shouldn't be THAT bad. Just compare it to QuickTime or Media Player, which has all that unneccessary crap around the small movie.
Re:I fully concur
by
mccalli
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· Score: 3, Interesting
[I fully concur]...with his gripe about custom interfaces. Xine is a desktop nightmare. Ditto with most of the other multimedia players I've encountered. They sacrifice high-tech intuitive controls for some made-up high-tech LOOK.
Absolutely. Sadly, this follows you around by platform too. The Linux apps tend to have it, Windows apps certainly do (there are some terrible offenders bundled with sound cards), and Apple with its Quicktime player does as well.
Apple in particular ought to know better. Standards are standards for good reason, and a consistent user-interface is key. The writer of The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, which was written years ago for System 7 and which I still retain my copy of even though I'm no longer on a Mac, has many relevant things to say about such nonsense.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:I like this guy, but...
by
DrMaurer
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Yeah, it works fine for you, but it shouldn't be the only way, should it?
I like the concept of themes, really, I do, but most people who do them have no concept of user-interface-design. If you're distributing a product, you should endevor to create a professional appearance once the work's been done behind the scenes.
A lot of folks seem to think that if it works for them, it works for everyone. Look at the plethora of shitty themes on themes.org or winamp skins at winamp.com or whatever it is that mac users do . . . my mac doesn't work right now. (iBook's yo-yo power supply is busted.) Anyhow, they're mostly just bad, cluttered, and really not that cohesive. I'm sure there are a couple, but I end up just getting the background pictures mostly.
For chrissakes, if you spend your whole life on a project, is 8 hours to make a theme unadorned with pictures of Heidi Klum wearing a Tux baby-T too much to ask?
"Gentlemen, BEHOLD! This thing!"
You should be able to use command lines, if you want, but it shouldn't be required.
-- Dan
switching distros
by
biostatman
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I would normally agree that switching distributions just to get an app (or class of apps) to work is a little nutty, but if you *REALLY* want to play videos, the plf rpms for Mandrake make installing quite a bit of video software for linux super easy (though I imagine there are apt-get repositories that do the same). All you need to do is go here to configure and add a urpmi source from one of the plf mirror sites, and it is literally as easy as "urpmi.update -a && urpmi mplayer".
Side note on what a kick ass program mplayer is: plays DVDs, mpg, wmv, mov (sorenson!), divx, xvid, on and on and on. Moreover, the low CPU usage is really quite incredible and makes it possible to watch DivX movies on my laptop that absolutely crawl on winders. Good stuff.
It seems like the UI annoyances Jamie Zawinski complains about with Mplayer are really quite trivial when you consider the immense benefits. I'm sure that there is a skin out there that would conform to the UI principles he wants (if not, how hard could it be to roll your own mplayer skin, especially for someone with his skills?). Find it. Use it. Stop complaining.
(OT: can we please cut the "JWZ" crap? Though I admire the things he has done for Linux, I think he seems to take himself a little too seriously, so when I see "JWZ" I'll think shortcut for "gee wiz", not that whining diva)
-- For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
You're an idiot.
by
Wakko+Warner
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· Score: 4, Interesting
So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too?
Maybe, if you're jwz.
You seem to be slightly ignorant of the fact that this "article" is just a rant, one of many on jwz's rants page. When he's pissed off, he writes something there. He's pissed off about the state of multimedia players on linux, and he ought to be. They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use. This is a cold, hard fact; jwz just said it better than I could.
- A.P.
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux
by
markv242
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Couple of points, before you start feeling too good about yourself. (er, whoops, too late)
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
...all to do the most basic of tasks, record video from line in and encode to mpeg2?
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived...
by
edunbar93
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"What a grumpy asshole" is the exact phrase used by everyone that recieves complaints about a product, about which they have their heads so far up their asses as to believe that it's perfect in every way.
THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The louder, noisier, and more obnoxious the complaint, the more the person wants it fixed. If he wanted the product to please die quietly, he wouldn't even bother to complain. He would merely go away. He would let the product die in its own feces like he thinks it ought to. He wouldn't complain, because he doesn't want the product to improve and heave itself out of the pool of shit that it currently sleeps in.
And you know what? In order for this to happen, especially when the producers of said product honestly believe there's nothing wrong, the people making the product in question need to have their egos adjusted, probably in a brutal manner which will leave them lying on the floor in a fetal position, crying for their mommy. I have personally been through this before, so shut up, take the man's advice, and do it right. Stop fucking complaining that he's a mean old man, because believe it or not, he IS helping. He DOES give a damn. And if you're too weak minded to see this and adjust your own damn attitude, you deserve to die by choking on your own shit.
-- "No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Slashdot Mirror
If you look for reasons to be unhappy with ANYTHING, you'll find them. Why not focus on what's good and what needs to be improved? "This is shit and too big of a pain in the ass to screw with" isn't a particularly exacting or insightful analysis.
I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.
And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".
I've been saying the same things about skinnable interfaces for a while now. I've never found one that is acceptable. Look at xmms and winamp skins. I'd say 70% are just plain ugly, 30% are good to beautify, and 100% (as far as I've seen) are unusable. When they have text at all, they have tiny unreadable fonts. They have buttons that don't look like buttons, and they are bitmapped so you can't resize it like a normal app.
When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.
This is a fact: mplayer just rocks!
It can play just about ANY video file. And it does hell of a job playing! You can switch to fullscreen/back in an instant, even do panning-resizing on the fly (good for viewing 9:16 videos on 3:4 screen), adjust audio/video sync with a key, etc.
Ever tried using windows players? How about playing "bad" avi files, containing no indexes? Media Player, RealOne player all failed on those (well, they do play it, but you can't really seek, or if you can, it's fkkin slow).
Oh, and check that QuickTime player for Windows. It's slow, it's lame, it flickers, you can't resize it or do fullscreen.
I can't say much about mplayer's GUI, because I don't use it, but even that shouldn't be THAT bad. Just compare it to QuickTime or Media Player, which has all that unneccessary crap around the small movie.
Absolutely. Sadly, this follows you around by platform too. The Linux apps tend to have it, Windows apps certainly do (there are some terrible offenders bundled with sound cards), and Apple with its Quicktime player does as well.
Apple in particular ought to know better. Standards are standards for good reason, and a consistent user-interface is key. The writer of The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, which was written years ago for System 7 and which I still retain my copy of even though I'm no longer on a Mac, has many relevant things to say about such nonsense.
Cheers,
Ian
Yeah, it works fine for you, but it shouldn't be the only way, should it?
I like the concept of themes, really, I do, but most people who do them have no concept of user-interface-design. If you're distributing a product, you should endevor to create a professional appearance once the work's been done behind the scenes.
A lot of folks seem to think that if it works for them, it works for everyone. Look at the plethora of shitty themes on themes.org or winamp skins at winamp.com or whatever it is that mac users do . . . my mac doesn't work right now. (iBook's yo-yo power supply is busted.) Anyhow, they're mostly just bad, cluttered, and really not that cohesive. I'm sure there are a couple, but I end up just getting the background pictures mostly.
For chrissakes, if you spend your whole life on a project, is 8 hours to make a theme unadorned with pictures of Heidi Klum wearing a Tux baby-T too much to ask?
"Gentlemen, BEHOLD! This thing!"
You should be able to use command lines, if you want, but it shouldn't be required.
Dan
I would normally agree that switching distributions just to get an app (or class of apps) to work is a little nutty, but if you *REALLY* want to play videos, the plf rpms for Mandrake make installing quite a bit of video software for linux super easy (though I imagine there are apt-get repositories that do the same). All you need to do is go here to configure and add a urpmi source from one of the plf mirror sites, and it is literally as easy as "urpmi.update -a && urpmi mplayer".
Side note on what a kick ass program mplayer is: plays DVDs, mpg, wmv, mov (sorenson!), divx, xvid, on and on and on. Moreover, the low CPU usage is really quite incredible and makes it possible to watch DivX movies on my laptop that absolutely crawl on winders. Good stuff.
It seems like the UI annoyances Jamie Zawinski complains about with Mplayer are really quite trivial when you consider the immense benefits. I'm sure that there is a skin out there that would conform to the UI principles he wants (if not, how hard could it be to roll your own mplayer skin, especially for someone with his skills?). Find it. Use it. Stop complaining.
(OT: can we please cut the "JWZ" crap? Though I admire the things he has done for Linux, I think he seems to take himself a little too seriously, so when I see "JWZ" I'll think shortcut for "gee wiz", not that whining diva)
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too?
Maybe, if you're jwz.
You seem to be slightly ignorant of the fact that this "article" is just a rant, one of many on jwz's rants page. When he's pissed off, he writes something there. He's pissed off about the state of multimedia players on linux, and he ought to be. They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use. This is a cold, hard fact; jwz just said it better than I could.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
- "This is TOO simple."
I question your definition of simple. Check:
- Compile
- Find driver
- Compile
- Compile
- Install
- Try to find package
- Compile
- Install
- Cross fingers
- Compile
- Install
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
"What a grumpy asshole" is the exact phrase used by everyone that recieves complaints about a product, about which they have their heads so far up their asses as to believe that it's perfect in every way.
THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The louder, noisier, and more obnoxious the complaint, the more the person wants it fixed. If he wanted the product to please die quietly, he wouldn't even bother to complain. He would merely go away. He would let the product die in its own feces like he thinks it ought to. He wouldn't complain, because he doesn't want the product to improve and heave itself out of the pool of shit that it currently sleeps in.
And you know what? In order for this to happen, especially when the producers of said product honestly believe there's nothing wrong, the people making the product in question need to have their egos adjusted, probably in a brutal manner which will leave them lying on the floor in a fetal position, crying for their mommy. I have personally been through this before, so shut up, take the man's advice, and do it right. Stop fucking complaining that he's a mean old man, because believe it or not, he IS helping. He DOES give a damn. And if you're too weak minded to see this and adjust your own damn attitude, you deserve to die by choking on your own shit.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert