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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.'"
I don't get it. If they say they're compatible with Firefox - as in web browser - why does that browser need to run on a particular operating system? Since invention of flash video we are free from unnecessary plugins and related burden. Just enter address, and let it play.
But I guess politicians never opt for easy solutions.
Plain old sigh.
I wonder how the website might respond if you spoof the browser's user agent string. Would it function well enough, or is their notice legitimate?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
McCain hates Net Neutrality.
There really isn't a win here.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Really? If it were the "most technologically-savvy event" wouldn't it at least make an effort to support ALL operating systems, especially the one used mostly by the "technologically-savvy" people. It isn't a difficult feat to use technology which is supported by the three major OSes on the market. This isn't acceptable in this day and age. =/
The "valid reason" is almost certainly that Microsoft paid them a lot of money.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
agreed. This is the exact same setup as the olympics. Gotta hand it to microsoft, when they lock people out from anything other than their own solution, they go all the way.
Exactly. Rather than complaining on Slashdot, send the Democratic Convention people an Email at tell THEM you are not happy. I did. Took about 2 minutes to compose a polite and informative message.
Linux/*ix users might be in the minority, but they do tend to be more vocal.... and often it works (to my utter surprise)
Let's be serious here - nobody's spending money to block anything. The DNC didn't build anything themselves, nor should they - they're a political party, not a software shop. They chose a vendor to build out and operate a video infrastructure for the convention, and that vendor happens to have built on Silverlight (that's where incentives and support from MS likely came in, not directly to the DNC). Why the vendor did that, I have no idea.
I'm a pretty big believer that these things should be built on open technologies, not the least of the reasons being that it's GOOD for political parties to have their content built upon and reused (that's much of what fuels political blogs). As such I'm a little miffed that they chose a vendor that didn't support open technologies, but my guess is that someone's list of questions didn't extend past "can you run it on a Mac" (thereby showing that they're not part of the old Windows-only generation, they're part of the new Mac generation). Given the size of the Linux market, I think the use of content question is much bigger than the runs-on-a-particular-OS question.
Free (as in beer) web design and hosting was probably enough to buy them out.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The DNC didn't build anything themselves, nor should they... They chose a vendor....
First, we do agree that they chose this vendor -- so they probably should have gone with a different vendor, right?
Second, whether it's the DNC, some vendor, or Microsoft itself, there was, at some point, someone who made a choice to spend a bit of extra work on "choosing an OS"... which implies that money was spent (somewhere, somehow) to block that OS, instead of letting the site fail (or succeed!) on that OS.
Silverlight does exist for Linux. Perhaps not in a usable form, but it does exist. Because of the user-agent detection here, someone would not only have to get Moonlight working, they'd also have to spoof their user-agent -- which, among other things, tells the DNC that they have no Linux users.
Now, what's the alternative? sakusha was implying that getting Linux support would mean spending extra money, but you've made it very clear -- it would, instead, be about choosing a vendor who's already implemented Linux support (or simply Flash support).
I believe it would be worth it, even if there was some cost. But I don't think there would be.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hmm.
McCain is old, yet:
-it's Obama who needs a week-long vacation
-it's Obama who thinks there are 57 or 58 states
-it's Obama who is afraid to debate McCain at 10 town-hall style meetings, after saying he would debate him anywhere and anytime.
McCain doesn't know his position on issues, yet Obama:
-After his initial weaselly response on the Russian-Georgian conflict, then condemns Russia, deciding that it is better to sound like McCain.
-was the only IL state senator to speak out on the statehouse floor against a measure that would prohibit "finishing an abortion" in the case of a botched abortion where the child was actually born alive, and still thinks the question of when life begins is above his pay grade.
Good lord.
I'm not necessarily a McCain supporter, but if you're going to criticize him, please come up with something better than that.
Tho I'm sure Obama knows where his house is, too. Right next door to a convicted felon. Tell me again why Gov Blago isn't speaking at the convention this week?
-john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
Well it certainly wasn't because they care about openness. I suggest next time you offer a more plausible reason they chose this technology, rather than just dismissing what is at least a mildly plausible explanation as kooky.
I can't think of one that doesn't make them come off as flakes, though. YMMV.
-hobo
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
one more reason to vote republican, eh?
Ummmm.... help me out here.... I looked through the grandparent post trying to find your "one reason", but I was unable to locate it.
Lets see... Obama reluctantly voted for telecom immunity?
McCain was not only FOR telecom immunity but some of his staffers were the ones running around lobbying congress to manufacture legislation to grant that immunity in the first place.
Lets see, Obama being anti-tech?
They botches this issue on their website, but Obama is FAR FAR more favorable to our side on these issues than McCain.
Lets see, Obama being clueless on tech?
Again, yeah they botched this issue on their website, but McCain may as well be Ted Steven's grandpa. McCain LITERALLY needs a few good lessons from Ted Stevens teaching him how to use e-mail.
Lets see, conventions where they don't take real input from the masses?
Buahahahahaha. Yeah, McCain is real big on that. Snicker. The closest McCain comes to "taking input" is to run and cover his ass when he gets caught out as pro-life-pandering-bullshit-artist after leaking Tom Ridge for VP.
So ahhh, perhaps you could help me out and be a little more specific? What exactly is the one reason you had in mind to vote republican instead? I must have overlooked it.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Funny, I thought it was the hackers who needed to be protected from the political parties.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Funny you should say that since I use Thunderbird to extract email out of Outlook's PDB format into an mbox file so I can do something useful with it.
In other words, it already stores the mail in a lowest common denominator format. Of course, since it performs decently well with an IMAP server, you can just push it all up that way if necessary.
In contrast, Outlook offers to throw away half of the relevant metadata and excrete a tab delimited mess.
Maybe you should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
I really don't think that was the bad part of his speech. The bad part was:
"an Internet was sent by my staff"
This from the guy who is supposed to be overseeing the ISPs.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You mean this part?
Stevens' speech was analyzed by Princeton computer science professor Edward Felten, who said that he disagreed with Stevens' argument but felt that the language "series of tubes" was entirely reasonable as a non-technical explanation given off-the-cuff in a meeting.
Clearly not at his most lucid, but it's obvious that he meant "email".
As I said, I'm not a fan of Ted Stevens, and I'll go further and say I don't want him in charge of the Commerce committee. But I still fail to see why this basically sound—if ineptly and overexcitedly delivered—part of his speech is more than a simple malapropism, or why /.ers continue to find it so blindingly hilarious two years after the fact.
"I'm no Microsoft fanboy or anything, but I've been pretty impressed with Silverlight."
There's this bullshite meme here on dotslash that supposes Microsoft does nothing right. But while they've had their legendary failures(who hasn't? Hello, Apple Newton), we don't give them enough credit for what they do right. For all it's instability, Windows 95 was a lot of fun, and 98 was a pretty good game platform. Windows 2000 was a very good OS with what has become an almost cult following. Face it, once the first service pack arrived, Windows XP was pretty fast, pretty stable, and pretty useful. Their servers since 2000 have been very popular with the enterprise, and those people just love Sharepoint, all for good reasons. They're great products. Office got it's foot in the door because of the OS monopoly, but it eventually beat out Wordperfect because it became better than Wordperfect.
They made good games even before they bought Bungie, and just about everyone can agree that their hardware is top notch. It ought not to be a Karma sin here to give them credit when they actually earn it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Perhaps this is just my 70's showing, but I still fail to see any real tangible harm being done. Even your supposed study shows nothing more than that girls will do stupid shit to get guys attention. (Duh)
Whenever I see this talk all I can hear is "We slipped up and let the sexual revolution happen. Now nobody's feeling guilty so we can't manipulate them anymore. Perhaps we can undo it slowly with a bunch of psycobable."
For example there's this:
As long as nobody gets diseased or pregnant or commits a criminal offense, why is it my business at all how someone else felt about their sex partner at the time? And why earth would *you* care if I care? It most assuredly isn't *your* business.
I'll agree that if someone were to look to pron material for relationship advice, the results would be pretty disasterous (not to mention the immense competition there'd be for the position of Pizza Delivery Boy). However, I'm pretty sure my kids aren't that dumb. They don't seem to be getting their physics from Looney Tunes, or their self-defense pointers from Jacky Chan, so I'll take my chances on this one, if its all the same to you.