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Democracy Player Is Dead, Long Live Miro
MrSpin writes "Democracy Player has relaunched today as Miro. Developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro aims to make online video "as easy as watching TV", while at the same time ensuring that the new medium remains accessible to everyone, through its support for open standards. The open-source application combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. But why the name change? According to last100, who have published a full review and guide to Miro: "When Democracy Player launched back in February 2006, the feedback received was that the name evoked different, yet equally negative responses. For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project, and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. In contrast, the new name is purposely abstract.""
... and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. I hope, for the sake of everything that I believe in, this is a false statement. It's sad that I have to go on living knowing that while I was alive a man was elected president of my country (twice!) & in that time, he was able to put a foul taste in your mouth upon saying "democracy."I guess we can still say that the core ideas of democracy are good, that only awful men with awful goals and intentions used democracy to do wrong. I guess today Marxism sounds like an idea with potential though historically men like Joseph Stalin & Mao Zedong have given it a social stigma that the terrible things they did under its name are inherent and must occur when the idea is put into practice.
I hope the rest of the world is not convinced that democracy comes hand in hand with the actions of the United States of America today. Hopefully other countries will become model democracies for the rest of the world.
I hope the theory of democracy is resilient enough to withstand the current administration and that it survives as a concept that can be taught to children as the model of the most fair form of government. I also hope that the rest of the world aspires to become democratic--as has been the popular progression for quite sometime. Ironically, we are tarnishing the image of a system that we hope the Iraqi people to embrace--quite possibly the reason that effort fails.
The history books will indeed be interesting to read when I am a withered old man.
I like this quote from Winston Churchill that explains while democracy is not perfect, it is the best we've got: Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
My work here is dung.
I wouldn't call the name abstract, as miro is Spanish for "I watch." Seems perfectly suitable to me.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Still, I have a hard time imagining how a good content buide is better than having google seaarch behind it when looking for content (as youtube does).
21st-Century-Citizen
Well, Bush and friends have done to the word "democracy" what Stalin and comrades have done to the words "socialism" and "communism"
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Everytime you hear crap about "saving our democracy" you ought to cringe. Democracy and freedom are not the same thing. You can have a monarchy and have a free society. You can have a democracy or representative democracy and have a society that is all but a police state. The abuse most commonly occurs when leftists criticize actions by regimes like the Bush Administration.
Truth is, America was a lot freer when we weren't even a democracy in name. When our founders created our country, only 1/3 of the federal body politic was directly elected. We had the lowest taxes, fewest regulations, our federal civil service was actually serving, rather than ruling, the people and federal police powers were few and far between. Today, well, speaks for itself.
I'm glad they changed the name. Their project has a lot more to do with freedom than democracy.
At this point, I'm personally willing to suspend Godwins law for discussions about American politics. The more that people look at fascism and the USA next to each other, the more likely it is that we'll be able to fix some of the disturbing similarities.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.