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MS Silverlight To Stream Obama Inauguration Events

Posted by kdawson on from the open-to-most dept.

Ilgaz writes in to let us know that we will have to install MS Silverlight 2 to watch the US President's inauguration online. Everyone running Mac PPC, Linux, and FreeBSD has been left out, as there are no working Silverlight 2-capable alternatives on these systems. Here is Microsoft's press release announcing the selection of Silverlight yesterday. Streaming of various events around the inauguration begins today at the Presidential Inaugural Committee site, which touts its "inclusive and accessible" coverage.

22 of 589 comments (clear)

  1. Humm... by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let's see. Wants to renew Bush's tax cuts, says it will take a while to figure out how best to close Gitmo, and picks a Windows only solution for streaming....
    So far so good.

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    1. Re:Humm... by TimSSG · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or we can start doing it the way it was done in WW2 and shoot them as spies. Tim S

  2. Moonlight...? by gcnaddict · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Whatever happened to Moonlight? I thought they covered Silverlight 2.0 just fine:

    http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html

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  3. The story is crap, but by melted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think Silverlight is one of the few things Microsoft got right. I've been using Silverlight quite extensively on my Mac since Netflix switched to it, and it's rock solid. This kind of got me interested into looking into the programming aspects of it, and it's pretty darn easy if you know .NET Framework and WPF already, and if you don't, the learning curve is not that bad. I wanted to write a multi-file uploader for one of my apps, and I was able to do so in just a couple of hours, end to end.

  4. Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any chance of WikiMedia or someone else hosting an OGG for Firefox 3.1 and Opera users to enjoy the tag?

  5. Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. by xlotlu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    [...] in that only one website requires Silverlight to watch the inauguration, whereas [...]

    Yeah, it just so happens that the "one website" is the official presidential inaugural committee site, which pompously dares to call it the most open inauguration in history.

    Welcome to the change.

  6. Okay by coryking · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But understand that they are probably using Silverlight because one or more of the following:

    a) Their staff was familiar with C#/WPF and not Flash
    b) They could have had licenses for all that Windows Streaming stuff.
    c) The tech guys handling the streaming stuff knew the Microsoft stuff, not the Adobe stuff.
    d) Something else.

    Bottom line is follow the money. For whatever reason it was cheaper to use a Microsoft stack over an Adobe stack. My hunch is most of their visitors can install Silverlight. I would imagine they didn't take the decision to go Silverlight lightly either.

    free ideals

    Oh goodie! A flamewar is what you want, isn't it!? I'll toss in a log:

    Silverlight is a free download for end-users. Oh wait, you mean RMS "Free as in Freedom". Sorry, that won't happen. If it did, it wouldn't be an RMS approved deal either.

    I'm glad the administration isn't trying to favor something like GPL. GPL is a very political, ideological license . If the government ever releases stuff under the common definition of open-source, I'd prefer it to be either BSD licensed, or under a homebrew GPL-like license.

    There is a reason companies create their own GPL-like license--they like the concept, but dont want to be associated with "the movement". Does it create confusion? You bet. But it is because companies, for whatever reasons, wish to not be perceived as being associated with the FSF/RMS/"Free Software(tm)" movement.

    PS: I wouldn't be surprised to see them releasing documents under some Creative Commons license. I have nothing to back this up, just a hunch.

    1. Re:Okay by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually the most likely reality is someone really cheap (as in how much he was paid by the political party versus how much he was paid by 'er' someone else) came in to do that part of web site and made some choices that where motivated less by their loyalty to the future administration and more by their loyatly to silverfish. A political web site is a political web site, everything about it is part of the message not just the content.

      So the Obama camp is already starting to learn some lessons of how it can be manipulated to promote greed based corporate ideals. Of how it's message can be hijacked to promote some deceitful corporations agenda.

      It is a major flub, a demonstration of being exploited by corporate intrests right at the very beginning of their term, a painful lesson to be learned but one they need to remember. Not all of their staff, will in reality be their staff and many of them will be their to serve other peoples interests and not the interests of the government they claim to be serving.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:Okay by coryking · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm curious what they should be using beside Silverlight? Flash is just as "non-free" as Silverlight, isn't it? Keep in mind a requirement has to be "embeds in the web-page, runs on a good chunk of browsers, and works like youtube".

      Having some kind of text-link that you click on to open up a non-embeded browser doesn't cut it (which is what CSPAN does). Most people get confused by that stuff. Whatever your alternative is, bottom line is it has to work like youtube.

      A wise person would note that I'm asking for a trade off here. Being "open" means more then just the FSF definition. "Open" means anybody can not just get to your content, but can do so in a way that is easy. Thus, "Open" and "Easy to use" go pretty much hand in hand. You can't be open to all people if your website is shitty and hard to use. And you can have a easy to use website that doesn't have any useful content (thus not being open).

      Since the website has to be easy to use to be "open", you need to make sure your video can stream in a way most users are familiar with. And that means "make it work like youtube". You will find that it is just all but impossible to make a "youtube" without Flash or Silverlight.

      Life is full of tradeoffs. You may now commence moderating me into the floor for being a "M$" shill or whatever...

    3. Re:Okay by XcepticZP · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "silverfish"? That doesn't sound like a typo.

      That is just seriously immature on your part. I frankly didn't read the rest of your post when I read that one word. It's like having a debate with someone and instead of replying with something meaningful, or at the very least witty, you reply with an ad hominem. Want someone to take your opinion seriously? Then ditch the insults and ditch the immature behaviour.

      Yes, I do realize I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite by not replying to any of your points and instead only focusing on one word you wrote.

    4. Re:Okay by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I prefer silverfish, mainly because of M$ being such a marketing driven company it is bound to niggle at them and I find the thought, well, to be blunt quite humorous. Also I feel that my very mild poke at the M$ marketing team is still far less than the years of M$ abuse at the FOSS movement ie. a cancer, terrorists use it, hackers prefer it et al, and, those where not from some random poster's on a forum (that has funny mods) but from the senior executives of the company and spread in every commercial mass media outlet they could spread their message of well, hate, with absolutely no humour or even satire intended, just a message of greed.

      So forgive me my sense of humour and I will definitely 'not ever' take your criticism to heart ;).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  7. Submitted to change.gov by andrewpmk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=087800000005BUn

  8. Re:WRONG! by Ilgaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Are computers 3 years old outdated? Even back in 1998, sites could provide 3 alternatives (Qt, Real, Wmedia) on same page. What happened to that magnificent technology? Is such a historical event suited for another DRM framework install advertisement? I am not for flash too. It is giving user (citizen) the choice. It is possible, even basic pages on shared hosts can do it. Apple, Real, VLC and Adobe guys will happily install their servers too.

    Linux Moonlight PRE ALPHA is not Silverlight 2. I was always wondering if anyone would fall into that trick and there we go. Microsoft doesn't support YOU, your OS. It supports Developers to make a clone of the real Silverlight. Just like Windows Media Codecs for Quicktime, even while excellently coded, can't replace a full feature Windows Media Player. E.g. it can't do DRM streams/music store. You know why they exist? So they can claim unofficial support when a media companies IT guy asks about "What about multi platform support? Mobile support?"

  9. Hopefully the W3C will compete by coryking · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My hope is by using Silverlight (or Flash), I can send a message to the W3C and friends to get their damn act together and make my life easier. It seems the W3C guys think we developers want yet another pile of semantic tags (like anybody uses the existing ones...). They'd be better severed by generously ripping off XAML and adding useful things like stylesheets. HTML should be more layout oriented, not "semantic" oriented.

    Semantic languages work fine for a describing the contents of a book (or creating a PDF file), but are horrible for the web. With books or PDF files you can semanticly describe your content and since you know exactly what device you are targeting, you can make a stylesheet that looks good for that device. With the web, you have no clue what your output device is, so you need a very robust language for layout to make sure things arrange themselves properly.

    Bottom line is Silverlight and Flash both make it easy to control the layout and functionality of your application. HTML + Javascript + CSS can do the same thing, yeah, but only in a very brittle non-robust way (though jQuery helps a lot).

  10. Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. by Thinboy00 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sure that they meant open as in open access. Assuming that they meant open software is a bit of a stretch.

    It isn't open access. I'm running Linux and I can't use it. Therefore it is excluding me based on OS usage. I'd gladly use Adobe Flash (they make it for Linux)

    Oh! the injustice. Having to load a browser plug-in! You think Adobe would handle a monopoly in any market differently than Microsoft? You must not use their products, then.

    Adobe isn't Microsoft. M$ does this because Windows is competing with other OSs and M$ doesn't want Silverlight to work there. If Silverlight didn't exist Flash would still work on Linux. It's just that then we wouldn't have any compatibility issues since everyone would be using Flash. Finally, I'd gladly install the closed-source Silverlight plugin, but M$ won't let me.

    If you are from the US and voted for Obama because you thought his platform was somehow anti-Microsoft, then, frankly, you're an idiot. This is it though...*this* is what lifted the veil and caused you to see the world for what it is. Silverlight. When there are lots of other options available, no less (maybe that's what they meant by "most open"?) Your trolling needs work.

    If I had been old enough to vote and I had voted for him, it would have been because I expected him to take a sterner line against blatantly anticompetitive measures such as Silverlight. And about the "other options": What if e.g. Congress decided its website would only work on Windows? Certainly people using Linux/Mac/whatever can get the information via news sources etc. right? The problem is that it becomes impossible to get the information straight from the horse's mouth (Why should I have to rely on The New York Times when their photojournalism is blatantly biases?).

    --
    $ make available
  11. Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can check how much this favor was worth (not much).

    We can look forward to the future. After all the RIAA paid over 150 times the amount microsoft bought this with.

  12. Re:So much for a tech savvy Whitehouse. by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oh! the injustice. Having to load a browser plug-in! You think Adobe would handle a monopoly in any market differently than Microsoft? You must not use their products, then.

    Unless, of course, you haven't paid the microsoft tax.

    Then you're simply excluded from "the most open inauguration in history".

  13. MS has pulled this stunt before by walterbyrd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Msft pulled the same stunt for the Democratic National Convention:

    http://ixnotes.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/democratic-national-convention-against-gnulinux-or-bought-by-microsoft/

    And for the Olympics.

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080623-nbc-olympics-on-the-go-download-service-is-vista-only.html

    Must be nice to able to buy so much influence.

  14. Re:May I respectfully suggest the damn TV? by joshbosh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree.

    Personally, I haven't owned a television since 2003, but I'm also the type of person who would never watch an inauguration. I'm having difficulty imagining a person who would watch an inauguration but not own a television. Are there any of you out there?

  15. Re:Stupid submitter by heffrey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'll bet there are more windows desktop machines that can't run silverlight than linux ones. That's my point.

  16. Re:Anti-competitive my rear. by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Silverlight has a very tiny installbase right now.... The fact that many *could* install it if they wanted to isn't terribly important.

    The same argument is used against making sites that use modern css features and sending out files in opendocument formats and such, only in this case an even larger percentage of users *could* install supported apps if they wanted.

    Linux and BSD may have a small percentage of the desktop market, but what about the sub desktop, ie mobile phones, small tablets (like nokia's), set top boxes etc... By using silverlight you are excluding all these users... Flash may not be perfect, but it has much wider support on such devices.

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  17. Stop continuing the bullshit... by Stu+Charlton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This isn't a screw up. They just placed higher priority on streaming quality than on accessibility -- especially given there are many more channels to see the inauguration live (TV, Flash, etc.) than this one.

    Did you SEE how high quality the DNC streaming coverage was? It was phenomenally good, a leap ahead of the typical Youtube quality.

    --
    -Stu