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Linux Not Supported For Democratic Convention Video

bucketoftruth writes "If you browse to the Democratic Convention website and attempt to check out any of their upcoming streams, you bump into the following limitation: 'We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.'"

44 of 794 comments (clear)

  1. NASA too by mrslacker · · Score: 2, Informative

    NASA's site is no better for NASA TV In fact, it streams just fine in Linux (assuming codecs, etc), _if_ you can get to the correct URL to stream.

  2. Furthermore by eclectro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Biden his VP choice is against net neutrality

    I think Obama has lost his mojo.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:Furthermore by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Obama lost his mojo two months ago.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
  3. Re:User agent by KingArthur10 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It requires Silverlight. If you spoof the agent string, it asks you to install both Silverlight and Move Network's media player plug-in.

    --
    I came, I saw, She conquered.
  4. Re:So what? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Informative

    It says you have to install Silverlight to see it.

    I hate to say it, but Flash has existed, and been a viable option, for long before Silverlight, and it's got a far greater install base. Why'd they choose Silverlight over Flash?

    I'm sure there are valid reasons, I'd just like to hear them.

    Does silverlight for linux exist?

    Short answer: Yes.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  5. I'm watching it on xine right now by gambolt · · Score: 5, Informative
  6. use this with VLC by jaredmauch · · Score: 4, Informative
    1. Re:use this with VLC by AM088 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except it's the no-sound version. With a little guesswork, I was able to figure out the right one:

      http://cnn-cnnlive-2-primary.wm.llnwd.net/cnn_cnnlive_1_primary?MSWMExt=.asf

    2. Re:use this with VLC by houghi · · Score: 2, Informative

      Play it with seventies porn as the sound background, then you can hear what the politicians intend to do to you.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  7. Re:User agent by _xeno_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Would it function well enough, or is their notice legitimate?

    It wouldn't work: this is Silverlight rearing its ugly head again.

    You might be able to get away with user-agent spoofing and Moonlight, but I don't know how far along Moonlight actually is.

    $ apt-cache search moonlight
    mono-smcs - Mono C# 3.0 compiler for CLI 2.1 (Moonlight / Silverlight)

    I'll take that to mean "not far enough." Although you can download builds directly from the Moonlight site itself.

    These builds do not include media codecs (video or audio), for that, you must currently build Moonlight from source code.

    That would seem to settle it: not quite far enough, unless you're willing to build it from source. Which I'm sure someone, somewhere, will, and let us know how it goes.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  8. Re:OS Related? by pravuil · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sucky they would use silverlight. I'm watching it on the CNN live feed through Totem. Have to make sure you have the fluendo codecs or any other gstreamer derivative to watch them though but it works.

  9. Email Time by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Rather than everyone speculating WHY they chose to use such an annoying setup and complaining here, let's just all Email them and let them know we are not happy and why. I did (not that I even WANT to watch the video). Doesn't take long.

    Here is the Email address: info@demconvention.com

  10. Re:Silverlight by aarku · · Score: 2, Informative

    I saw an article on Slashdot about the recent Olympics streaming using a network called Limelight. Sure enough, the democratic convention is using it too. There may be some Flash based solution similar to this, but Limelight seems like a viable option to stream live video to a LOT of people.

  11. Re:What's a better option? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player to choose from.

    I'd suggest h.264 in an mp4 container. Quicktime will play it, Media Player should play it, and Linux (totem/kaffeine/xine/etc) will play it.

    Flash is the known quantity -- it works on Linux, just not very well.

    But I think pretty much all of the ones you suggested are a better choice than Silverlight, in its current state.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  12. What video codec has a W3C spec? by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    It costs less to just design a page for W3C spec.

    There is no W3C spec for codecs to be used for live streaming video and audio. When W3C tried to specify that browsers SHOULD decode Theora and Vorbis in an object element (HTML 4) or a video element (HTML 5), Nokia female-dogged.

  13. File Complaints Here by md17 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Complaining about this on Slashdot does little to change it. Instead, please send your complaints to: info@demconvention.com

  14. Switching to higher or lower rate streams by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ugh. What could these possibly offer that couldn't be done with, say, Flash?

    I just went to Move Networks' web site, and the FAQ mentioned one thing that FLV doesn't appear to offer: automatic switching to lower or higher rate streams depending on network conditions. (Remind you of RealPl[buffering...]ayer?) Now all we need to do is start politely female-dogging to Move Networks to port its player to Moonlight, the Free implementation of Silverlight.

  15. theora by twitter · · Score: 2, Informative

    You should be able to do both with ogg theora. GNU/Linux has done streaming media well for ages. If you don't believe me contemplate the flexibility of MythTV front and back ends.

    They are, at least bright enough to use Apache (Red Hat).

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  16. Flamebait? It's true! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sheesh, we even had a story about McCain's tech platform (once he finally formulated one).

    It specifically says that he believes in protecting children from porn and the RIAA's War on Sharing, but NOT 'prescriptive' legislation like Net Neutrality.

  17. Re:Priorities by DeathElk · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why was this called a troll?

    Because if sakusha knows that Linux has approximately one percent desktop penetration, then he should also know that the cost of adopting and supporting Silverlight would be higher that other more open methods.

  18. Re:Does flash do live streaming? by strags · · Score: 3, Informative

    Flash certainly can do live streaming. In fact, the APIs for streaming vs. on-demand are very similar.

  19. Re:Silverlight by Sen.NullProcPntr · · Score: 3, Informative

    There may be some Flash based solution similar to this, but Limelight seems like a viable option to stream live video to a LOT of people.

    Limelight is a content provider so if the content were Flash they could provide that as well. The Silverlight packaging of the DNC video probably has nothing to do with Limelight

  20. Re:So what? by WatFiv · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why'd they choose Silverlight over Flash?

    For *live* streaming, I suspect that it's far cheaper to set up a bunch of Windows Media servers than it is to set up a bunch of Flash servers.

    Flash Streaming Server licenses are *extremely* expensive. There are open-source alternatives, but so far as I know none of them are very good at handling thousands (or tens of thousands) of simultaneous connections.

    Windows Media servers, however, are just regular ol' Windows servers -- couple hundred dollars per box with no user limits, and they do quite well with heavy loads.

    Unless Adobe manages to compete better on pricing, or unless some of the open-source alternatives get better at scaling to thousands of users, then I bet we'll see more and more developers pushing Silverlight without Microsoft having to pay them to do anything.

    And note that I'm talking about *live* streaming, not streaming prerecorded stuff like YouTube.

  21. Ha ha. From Boycott Novell.... by twitter · · Score: 0, Informative

    Your employer seems to be running out of money, thanks to foolish spending. $6 Billion sounds like a lot for a company that's about to blow its last $20 billion on stock buy backs, but that's just part of the great ongoing collapse. Got your total fuckwad resume polished up? It will do better than one that puts emphasis on any other M$ skillz when they are gone.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  22. Re:Doesn't matter to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why write Nader in, he's on the ballot in most states (the good ones anyways).

  23. But the server runs RedHat by symbolset · · Score: 4, Informative

    Netcraft confirms it.

    I can't believe you guys didn't notice this yet. You're slipping.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  24. Re:Doesn't matter to me by openldev · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, JohnMcCain.com uses Flash for video, and I can watch it fine on my Linux box. (To be fair, so does BarakObama.com.) Regardless, the site uses Silverlight, which is a bit ridiculous. Flash has been around for years, and works on most computers that you need video. Not that I care what they're saying anyway ...

  25. Re:Priorities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You are right, this was about money. It costs less to use this solution. Adobe wants your arm and a leg and possible your left nut for licensing for streaming flash. Windows media is essentially free.

    If someone has the wherewithal to actually get Moonlight working, I am sure they could figure out the user agent spoofing, its not that hard.

  26. Re:Obama hates linux! by runningduck · · Score: 3, Informative

    me@LiMac:~$ lynx -head -dump http://www.barackobama.com/
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:35:02 GMT
    Server: PWS/1.3.22
    X-Px: ht dal-btn-n15
    ETag: "74ea62-af3-48b339d1"
    Content-Length: 1220
    Content-Type: text/html
    Content-Encoding: gzip
    Vary: Accept-Encoding
    Last-Modified: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:01:37 GMT
    Cache-Control: max-age=1446
    Expires: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:59:08 GMT
    Connection: close

    me@LiMac:~$ lynx -head -dump http://www.johnmccain.com/
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Content-Length: 106909
    Content-Type: text/html
    Content-Location: http://www.johnmccain.com/Home.htm
    Last-Modified: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:35:41 GMT
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    ETag: W/"18c861ab137c91:280"
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
    X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
    Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:35:59 GMT
    Connection: close

    You can also try: http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

    Most signs point to the fact that McCain hates Linux, not Obama.

    --
    -rd
  27. Re:So what? by Nutria · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ever try exporting messages from Thunderbird to anything else? I'm trying to do it right now, and oh yeah...

    Tbird stores email as the text mbox format. Just copy/ftp the file. No problem!

    Still, you've got to be a geek to know that. But as a /. reader, you are supposed to be a geek and therefore know how Tbird stores email.

    At least in any MS product that I've ever seen, there's ALWAYS an option to export data out as a lowest common denominator

    Outlook gives you the "opportunity" to export emails as tab- or comma-delimited files. What app, besides Outlook, knows how to import tab- or comma-delimited email files????

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  28. Same error on Mac? by Phroggy · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm getting the same error on Mac OS X 10.4 in both Firefox and Safari, as well as Safari on Windows Vista. In Firefox on Windows, it asks me to install Silverlight and the Move Networks plugin.

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  29. Re:OS Related? by mixmatch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Installs fine from the Ubuntu repositories on 64 bit. The binary is not 64 bit, but it does work.

  30. Re:User agent by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Informative

    You'd need both Moonlight and a version of the Move plugin that integrates with it. The actual video experience is mainly driven by Move, with Silverlight handling UX and overlays.

  31. Re:Doesn't matter to me by ElizabethGreene · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually it isn't silverlight that is the problem. If you forge a safari user agent* then you can see it's the "move player" plugin that isn't linux friendly.

    * Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/YY

  32. Don't forget the Move Networks aspect! by benwaggoner · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's a huge TCO advantage in the Move Networks delivery technology, as it can take advantage of ISP web caches so that multiple viewers on the same network can watch the same file chunk, cutting ISP's in-stream bandwidth requirements hugely, as well as outgoing bandwidth needed. For content like this which has a huge simultanous audience, that means scaling up is much, much cheaper.

    http://www.movenetworks.com/why-move/frequently-asked-questions

    Move Networks also offers pretty seamless rate adaption, so you don't get buffering messages as available bandwidth changes.

    I'm not aware of anything else like this availble in FOSS or generic MPEG-4. Most MPEG-4 software players and live encoders don't even support RTSP stream switching.

  33. Re:Doesn't matter to me by dougisfunny · · Score: 5, Informative

    If I recall correctly, he was the head of the commerce committee that was in charge of the network neutrality bill being pushed through a couple years back.

    The guy was in charge of regulating the internet. And called the internet a series of tubes.

    I don't even know what analogy to come up with in comparison. Car analogies are welcome ;)

    --
    This is not the funny you're looking for.
  34. Re:Priorities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Firefox gained visibility and market share after being ported to Windows and not before.

    When did misinformation like this start to get modded up as insightful?

    Firefox has always been available for Windows, don't know where the idea that it was "ported" to Windows came from.

    Here, check out the Phoenix 0.1 release notes.

  35. Re:Doesn't matter to me by WarJolt · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think considering his experience he has an idea of what Linux is.
    http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/cbcd3a48-4b0e-4864-8be1-d04561c132ea.htm

  36. Re:Doesn't matter to me by pcolaman · · Score: 2, Informative

    "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Doesn't get more clear than that. There's no double talk, no misleading, no "taken out of context." He said that, and what he said is joked about because obviously the internet as we know it was not created by Al Gore. "I took the initiative in helping to bring forth the commercialism of the Internet" would be far more accurate. And yes, I read what Al Gore actually said.

  37. Re:Tech Savvy Convention by jheath314 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Minor math quibble:

    0.000(recurring)1 is equal to zero, if you define it as 1 - 0.999(recurring). (Technically the notation you used isn't actually valid, but we get the idea that you're trying to express.)

    The formal proof has slipped my mind at the moment, so here's an informal demonstration instead:
    1/9 = 0.111111(recurring)
    2/9 = 0.222222(recurring) ...
    8/9 = 0.888888(recurring)
    9/9 = 0.999999(recurring) = 1

    --
    Procrastination Man strikes again!
  38. Re:Obama hates linux! by armanox · · Score: 3, Informative

    How so? PWS was the precurser to IIS...

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  39. Re:OS Related? by NorQue · · Score: 4, Informative

    It somewhat works on Linux, but it has issues. Search the Ubuntu Forums for "firefox flash crash" and you'll know what I mean. I currently can't watch Flash without Firefox crashing. After the crash it works fine for ~one-two Videos, then it will crash again inevitably. Also crashes on any other Flash content, like navigation elements. Without a Session Manager (using the one from TabMixPlus) and NoScript browsing would be unbearable.

    From what I gathered at the Ubuntu Forums this is an issue with Flash 9 and PulseAudio, hopefuly it will be fixed with Ubuntu 8.10.

    So, Flash works on Linux, but not very good, and especially not very good on one of the major Linux distributions.

  40. Re:The party is screwed up by Kaell+Meynn · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Obama issued a statement saying the bill was the best resolution that lawmakers were able to reach. But with the vote so lopsided, Obama could have easily voted against the bill, confident that it would pass anyway. It comes down to a matter of politics. The political tea-readers decided that there was no political upside to being against enhanced government spying, and so a vote was cast. Pity." - Telecom immunity passes Senate, Obama votes yes

  41. Re:So what? by dotancohen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Free (as in beer) web design and hosting was probably enough to buy them out.

    Microsoft paid for the software, the programming, and even the hardware for the Library of Congress's network to convince them to use Silverlight. It worked.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.