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Linux Version of Democracy Player Released
clahey writes "The Participatory Culture Foundation just released Democracy Player 0.8.2 for Linux, the first beta version for Linux. It's a free software internet TV client with built in support for both RSS video podcasts and downloading using BitTorrent. It can even scrape web pages for videos. It's an excellent way to find great internet video. For example, once you've installed Democracy, make sure to check out The Postal Service - Such Great Heights on the Telemusicvision channel."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
How appropriate for an internet TV appliance article.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Never let open-source programmers decide the name of their applications!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Why should I take special care to "check out the Postal Service?"
What exactly does this bring to the table? People who had or have an interest in the band probably saw the video in 2003 when it was released. It has NOTHING to do with the software being advertised.
Perhaps if the video were mentioned in the article it would be more accepta--OH WAIT! What article? All we have is a link to the home page of this project. Okay, it's open source, and it's probably cool. Fine. Submit an article, or at least a summary that doesn't suck. This awful writeup belongs more on digg than on slashdot, in my opinion.
I've been using the democracy player under OSX and Windows for the last several versions. It also frequently crashes, often taking out its config files in the process. The bitorrent bits wreak havoc on your network connection (on OSX and WinXP). The Linux version JUST became available, but given the problems with the more "mature" platforms, I'm reluctant to inflict it on my Linux laptop...
F* off you democrats! We don't need your Democracy propaganda on Slashdot.
This player is really neat! But there are other players out there.
For example, once you've read this comment, make sure you check out Nickelback's new smash hit, "All The Right Reasons" on www.supermusicchannel.com today! And once you've done that, make sure you go to www.pepsico.com for your chance to enter a FREE sweepstakes to win more Pepsi products!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
I don't know if I'd call this advertising. Democracy Player *seems* to be a non-commercial project. The code is open, and the development model is relatively open too. I'm not quite convinced of their openness and intentions though, since their channel guide seems to be closed. If it remains closed, it's a way for them to lock-in customers, AND producers, by building up a large database of media that no one else can put into their own products. More importantly, the channel guide URL can't be changed in the software, so users can't set it to an independent channel guide that they might prefer. They have a lot of work on their plates right now though, so I'll give them a little more time to sort this all out before I judge them too harshly :)
The Ubuntu .deb has dependancy issues on Ubuntu Dapper Drake. dpkg complains of libboost-python1.33.0 being missing because Dapper use libboost-python1.33.1.
This is similar to another open-source endeavor called ACTLab TV, with which you can stream TV programs from multiple users in real-time. A story about ACTLab TV appeared about a year ago.
It is also similar to Songbird, the Itunes-like application that focuses primarily on enabling users to download DRM-free music from independent artists. Songbird was also covered recently.
Get computers and accessories from Linux-friendly manufacturers
Infoterror = woke up on wrong side of bed = likes making two sides of an equation not equal = Insightful mod. Brilliant Post!
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Because YouTube and Google are commercial sites that host the content with commercial motives in mind and with commercial constraints on their operations. They are free right now because those companies want to grab a big chunk of market share and prevent the kind of democratic, distributed infrastructure from appearing that Democracy player is intended to give you.
Democracy player is an attempt at letting anybody host and distribute video without having YouTube or Google-like bandwidth at their disposal.
I'm sorry if you don't get why this might be important.
Maybe it will help if you think a little about IM services. The reason why we have AOL and MSN and all those other centralized commercial services that play poorly with FOSS, that are easy to listen in on, and that impose all sorts of restrictions is not technical, it's because those services managed to grab market share quickly, before a distributed IM infrastructure could take hold. If it hadn't been for that historical accident, IM would probably be more like E-mail today, with tens of thousands of interoperable hosts and open protocols.
People would like Internet video streaming to be more like E-mail services than like IM services: distributed and open.
You can always:
That sometimes works for me.
And if one is running Mandriva? Suse? .... .. then you learn about how to install the dependent software and build packages for your distro. If you are into Participating in your Culture, you will redistribute the package, or maybe even join the project and make a new package for each stable release. Sorry they don't have silver platters for everyone, I think it is pretty smooth that they have been able to develop this 'platform' for Linux, Windows and Mac at the same time.
I also think that they are being realistic by focusing on Windows and Mac computers because they are more commonly used by content producers and consumers.