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The NYT's OS-Restrictive Video Policies
ro1 writes to mention a story on Linux.com about the NYT's confusing video policies. Essentially, if you're running Linux you can only see videos running on the front page of the site; videos elsewhere on the site require Windows or OSX. Roblimo has a video tour of the NYT site to explain the issue in detail. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)
For everyone using firefox, here's a nice little extension to get past this stuff. You can also set it as a googlebot and get all their articles for free.
Apparently changing the UA string doesn't make a difference.. surely this would suggest to you a bug with the implementation of videos/flash etc under Linux
The point is that videos from the front page do work fine under Linux. So there is no reason to prevent other videos from working.
I just set my User Agent in Firefox 1.5.0.5/Ubuntu Linux 6.06 to Opera 8.0/Win 2000, after whitelisting the site with flashblock, the video played perfectly in the Videos section, and I wasn't shooed away by any browser detection.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Yes. However, I think I should have qualified it. I wrote that due to something in the wget man page:
However - that item is not in the current version of wget, so who knows.
Interesting hoever, that netscape at least at one point in time claimed copyright on "Mozilla" in a UA string.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Those statistics are for the bbc homepage only, for one week in september 2005. He even states that he expects an above average number of people visiting the front page are newer-to-the-internet users (because they haven't bookmarked the inside section they want yet), and those on corporate systems as the bbc is deemed 'safe' to visit from work. This is based on their user profiling in the past.
Both of those would depress the number of alternative OS and browser users. You also have to factor in the number of linux users that have already altered their Useragent string to windows+IE in order to bypass moronic page restrictions like the NYT. Windows+IE native users of course, have very little need to alter theirs.
Finally, that was a year ago. Vista still isn't out, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if both the numbers for OSX and linux were up, and of course firefox adoption - especially given an increasing number of corporates are adopting it for security. Certainly, the broad sweep of those figures is reasonable (I wouldn't expect linux use to be above 2% in those circumstances) but I wouldn't count on them as completely gospel of the current OS and browser useage for general users.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
That's total bullshit. You can't copyright a single word. (Trademark is another thing; but many browsers say "Mozilla compatible" and that can't be illegal as there is no attempt to say that it actually IS Mozilla.)
It's called full disclosure, and it's pretty standard when dealing with a "reputable" journalism source.
The chances are that most people here use linux
Actually I believe that most slashdotters use Windows. A couple of weeks ago I posted a comment that contained a URL to my home computer (it was deep down inside an obscure thread about the durability of Egyptian pyramids, so I didn't get slashdotted). The log showed that most of the hits from /.ers were using Firefox, as you'd expect, but more than half of all hits used some flavor of Windows.
The Boy Scouts are not a commercial entity. That's why they can "get away" with it.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Adobe is creating a Flash 9 player for linux. You can read the developer's blog here