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Real Announces Helix Grant Winners
elaineg writes "We're happy to announce the 2003 Helix Community Grant Program winners for development of open source projects on Helix. They are to UC Santa
Barbara for providing
robust multicast support in Helix, the Justin Karneges and Ulrich
Staudinger at the Jabber Foundation for Jabber/Helix integration,
Robert Kaye at MusicBrainz for integrated metadata
cleanup in the Helix DNA Client, Jesse Schell at Carnegie Mellon
University for integrating
the Panda3D game and simulation engine with Helix, and the Xiph.org
Foundation for further R&D and
support of Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs, including Helix DNA
platform integration. More details can be found in the press
release. Also, in vaguely related news, we've released Milestone 2 of the
Helix Player for Linux." Helix styles itself as "the first open multi-format platform for digital media creation, delivery and playback", and has been created by Real Networks.
Somehow, they expect us to believe this stuff. Believe me, there's no way I'll take this lying down.
What's that all about?
Is it good or is it not so good?
di yi ge post!
We hate RealNetworks because of spyware today.
Please re-post this story Thursday, when we love RealNetworks for their anti-Microsoft stand.
That Org Vorbiss R&D is given an award. Its a good format IMO
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
..the last sentence: Helix styles itself as "the first open multi-format platform for digital media creation, delivery and playback", and has been created by Real Networks. Real Networks? The same people who spawned the RealOne player? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that RealOne was a horrible player, so what incentive do I have for downloading this?
Who cares, Real sucks. I'm serious. Why is that company still around?
They are to UC Santa Barbara for providing robust multicast support in Helix
...
With 2123 gob-smacking episodes, there's really no need to inflict Santa Barbara multicasts on us again . It's robust enough already. Please!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...about the prevailing consensus about Real on /.
/. article about the launch of the Helix player contest.
By the way, here's the
...FUCKING REAL AD on Slashdot. What the fuck. Stop.
If this one is anything to go by it looks like they may have created something better than the old players from hell.
Simply a menu bar, a playback area and some control buttons. Lovely.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The only important parts of realmedia are the realaudio and realvideo codecs which as far as I know are proprietary. All attempts to integrate open formats like Vorbis into realplayer are only helping spread the disease. Why does anyone think it's interesting? Until the realaudio and realvideo formats are opened, integrating those other formats is just helping Realmedia Corp. co-opt the open formats.
Anywhere I can get these?
Second request--any way to get binaries that don't have GTK2 button order?
TIA!
Does this mean I'll still have to pay the $1,995 price tag?
Is there a direct link to download the new linux helix player? I don't want to register on their web site for no reason, I just need a link...
Can I have some karma now?
Its a Real thingy, we can safely ./ignore -wTf helix
Lord of the Binges.
That's what we have with RealOne player.
It sucks, remember?
Simple good.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
How much helix sucks. I just downloaded the player for Win32 and attempted to play an MP3 stream which is played flawlessly by Winamp, iTunes, WinMP, and XMMS. Helix played it full of chirps, like it was a bad MP3 from Usenet circa 1993, and to top it off it stopped to do a "Buffering..."
I can't make this up.
...must have something up their sleeve. Everything Real has ever done has been user-hostile, with the express aim of taking control of your computer away from you.
Without some absurdly good justification (a new board of directors with Mother Theresa as chairperson?), I can't believe that Real would do anything "open" without an ulterior motive.
... shit.
You seem to be saying that getting Realmedia to adopt open formats is a bad thing?
Sure, we'd all like all the codecs to be open but in the meantime proprietary+open is better than proprietary alone. Pre-existing proprietary codecs are never going to be opened. Whatever they or we want sorting out all the patents and licences to do so would be an unbelievable amount of effort. You can't just "undo" proprietary development like that.
What we can do however is help Realmedia see the value of Open formats here and now. We can't change their history but we can try and guide their future.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I don't even have it installed. If someone wants me to watch a video, they can either encode it in a different format or fuck off.
I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....
I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Free.
I'm sure there's a windows counterpart.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
EEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHHHH!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like Dean screaming.
It plays almost everything I need it to play. As of pre3 the exception seems to be realaudio streams (which play but seem to lose sync after a while). I'm sure that'll be sorted out before long though - props to the developers!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Look- everybody knows Real's mass market players have been horrible for quite some time. However, whenever anybody mentions Helix on /., any rational discussion is drowned out by a horde of people who haven't looked into Helix at all but want to get in their "R3AL I5 T3H 5UX0RZ!" me-too comment. Helix looks like a really solid effort, and the linux player is rather nice. Hopefully management will let them release a Windows port of the helix player as they intend to do.
First they need to get their licensing scheme in order. Next when I can compile Helix from source code, then I'll take them seriously.
Your UID is 1538 and that was only your fifth comment?!?
Use the source, luke.
This may be naive, but, can Helix be compiled for Yellow Dog Linux on Mac hardware?
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
Real is hideous spyware, bloatware and crapware; the most recent version is worse than ever:
2 41 90-2004Jan17.html
p _id=82303&package_id=84358
- au dio/record-streaming-video-real-video.htm
e am /all-streaming-video-recording-software.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
Instead, use these tools if Real Media is all that is available:
Player: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Capture and convert to AVI: Use Real 7ime, more about it here:
http://emoney.al.ru/capture-streaming-video-and
And if you want to see all the options for capturing streaming media:
http://all-streaming-media.com/record-video-str
FUCK REAL by any and all means possible.
Well, I prefer spending my time to develop applications using gstreamer and feeding the gstreamer's bugzilla.
I've seen some mail about helix on the gstreamer and on the matroska dev list.
It's very interesting, because the only thing that helix folks can say is : "Helix is really better because we have the best codec ever made : RV9. And if you join Helix, you can build a player that play RV9 file. If you don't join Helix, your player will suxx because it will not be able to play proprietary encoded RV9 videos and RV9 is the best codec that everybody will be using."
I maybe wrong because my english is not perfect. I hope to be wrong... If not, please forget helix. it's disgusting...
Ploum.net.
You seem to be saying that getting Realmedia to adopt open formats is a bad thing?
And you seem to be thinking that if you can give cancer cells unfettered access to healthy cells, everything will turn out A.O.K.
Real has already repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn't give a shit about its users. Why on earth would anyone concerned with open source do a thing that serves this company's best interests?
The sooner companies like Real go belly up, the better it will be for anyone who uses a computer. Streaming media will immediately shift to less proprietary sources, or non-proprietary sources. I challenge you: how does Real's continued existence serve anybody but the company's shareholders?
I'm totally lost here, I've registered all agreed to two seperate licenses but I can't find the source to M2. A little help here.
Like you have to ask.
Good to see (former) TI Programmers making it big. First Jimmy Mardel wins the Google Code Jam, now Justin.
For those that don't know, Justin Karneges created the Joltima RPG for the z80 processor based TI Calculators. He also worked with his company Affinix to create Joltima II (Infinity) for the Gameboy Color... unfortunately, they couldn't find a publisher, and by the time they did... the Gameboy Advance was released and they pretty much lost all hope.
Personally, I'd still buy their game... looks like one of the best RPGs ever made for a portable.
I think the guys over at Jabber need to work more on their shitty architecture before working on Helix.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
We're seeing moderation that makes no sense whatever, unless you have vested interests in the RIAA or in spyware developers like Real. The parent post had all kinds of useful links and was clearly well thought-out. Marking it as a troll really raises suspicions about who is doing the moderation here.
No, superior media formats win out over Real, and have done so for years.
.rm/.ram forced upon them as the only media choice on many websites, and the inarguably horrible Realplayer as the only means to play that content. I won't even go into their sleazy marketing tactics, they deserve to wither away just based on the technical aspects of their product.
People have had the blatantly inferior
You can't blame people for being resentful. Even if the company has completely changed--a big 'if' there--my response is still "So what?" Who needs Realmedia? There's a new, open-source player? So what? It might be useful for viewing the decaying Real content still out there on the net, but why should we promote the continued use of this crap?
If a shiny new media player is all it takes to erase our memories and win back the geeks, maybe SCO should be taking notes.
If there's any third party IP in there then relicencing becomes a complete nightmare. The codecs suffer from this fate.
You might recall a similar problem being faced with Mozilla. Stuff like the spell checker couldn't be opened and had to be left out of Mozilla and made available as a proprietary plugin by Netscape. With any luck over time the Open parts of the product will grow so as to render the closed parts into legacy. But that will take time. There is no magic wand that can change the past.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Best Open Source Project:
e leaseNotes
Company: RealNetworks, Inc.
Product: The Helix Player Project in the Helix Community
Check out the Helix Player at https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/draft/MS2R
Kevin Foreman
I was hoping for a new plugin that would cause the little remaining Real content on the web to stop sucking so much ass, but apparently it is beyond the realm of modern science. Buffering...
Subject sez it all. Although I must admit the build system on PPC requires a minor bit of chainsawing, and there's some trouble with gcc 3.3 due to gcc de-supporting varargs....
Monty
It looks to me like this helix thing is like what they were trying to do in the movie Antitrust. A stream to anything media distribution system. From what i read at the helix community site this could be the bassis for something like that. If i'm completely wrong and way off base please say so. It sounds interesting.
Well, I finally managed to get this new release to play mp3 and ogg files.. But it will not play anything else.. no mpg, rm, etc.. I am really dissapointed with this product so far.
serious inquiries only.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I manage the Helix Community Grant Program, and am really looking forward to working with the grant recipient choices. However, I am part of a larger team that's trying to effect change w/in Real... part of this effort is sharing the Slashdot community's thoughts with the exec team. Constructive comments are easier to convey than cranky responses about past perceptions. Help us out! We want to build products & release code that is for the greater good. With your support we can make this happen. Start here: what do you think about our Grant Recipient choices? Have you checked out the Helix Player project, or other projects in the Helix community?, Please advise...
Just a small comment, though most people know real from the realplayer and helixserver, Real is primarily a content-broker. Their players support their business to buy and sell content to the likes of BT and DT. To me it therefore seems that want to move (part) the SW business (the development of which is a cost-centre) to the outside world, thereby increasing their overall operating margins.
I think this is a smart way to work (from a business point of view) but ethically questionable.
brrrrrr it's cold
As a Linux desktop user myself, I'm really keen on making the Linux desktop commercially viable; something that our primary commercial competitors don't have a lot of motivation to do. Hopefully, we can complement the existing enthusiast-driven open source efforts with commercially-attractive (supported, OEMed, blah blah) software, making the platform as a whole far more attractive.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Troublemaker
"So what?" Who needs Realmedia? There's a new, open-source player? So what? It might be useful for viewing the decaying Real content still out there on the net, but why should we promote the continued use of this crap?
What cross-platform content format would you suggest then? WMV is not an option due to it being windows-only (there's a mac version, but it's been discontinued). Quicktime has no linux version (though you can get it to run through crossover, but performance in that case of horrible). All the other formats are either not available on all platforms, unsuitable for streaming, or too difficult to get running.
Like it or not, in the real world, rm is the ONLY format that will easily play on all the major platforms.
Maybe if ogg theora or ogg tarkin ever get off the ground that will change, but given how ogg vorbis is still a niche player, despite it being a clearly superior and completely open/free format that has been out for quite a while, this seems incredibly unlikely.
Yes - RealPlayer has always been free, and versions for Linux/UNIX, Mac, Windows, and Mobile devices here.
Keep the codecs closed source but allow their use for decoding Real-encoded content to other formats.
Last time I checked, this was explicitly not allowed by the license, which makes me suspect that the stuff about not owning all the IP is just a convenient smokescreen.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Various players
How to Capture Streaming Real Video and Streaming Real Audio
Streaming video recording software
Correction: Sorry, couldn't cancel the prior post, and didn't catch it on preview.
And this means you should be trusted because?
The player being open should mean that it will be very difficult for spyware to be snuck into it. So that's a plus. And I understand that you have abundant business reasons to maintain a monopoly over the server...damn, there's that word.
I find it quite difficult to trust a monopoly, even in a small niche. There've been just too many examples of monopoly positions being abused. (Like every one I've heard of that's been looked at closely.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Real basically has admitted that its own programmers are so completely inept that their only hope is to get some of the more naive members of the open-source to do the work for free.
Any Real codemonkeys out there willing to defend their handiwork?