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MS Silverlight To Stream Obama Inauguration Events
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.
That certainly didn't take long to have the rhetoric fail and the reality take charge.
You can watch it using flash video here
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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The actual copy from the references story is...
Microsoft's Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site...
Nowhere does it say that all the networks will be using Silverlight exclusively.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
http://www.hulu.com/spotlight/obamapresidency
The story *DOES NOT* say that Silver light will be used exclusivly accross all channels. It says:
Microsoft's Silverlight technology has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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"All hail Pres Bush the 3rd"
That would have been McCain. Obama is Clinton the Second, to judge by his cabinet.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Oddly enough Jan 20th is the official release date for Moonlight 1.0 The Linux implementation of silverlight. But only of the silverlight 1.0 spec. I wonder if 2.0 is really required.
moonlight roadmap
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Their implementation is only Silverlight 1. Silverlight 2 is in Alpha, but does not work with anything real, as I understand it.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I did very well. Mac PPC means Macintosh PowerPC. You know, not everyone switched to Intel and MS left out PPC users on release of Silverlight 2.0 without any kind of explanation. Mono Silverlight 2.0 support is in pre-alpha stages and there is no guarantee it will do a trick like that (live streaming).
There should be another way of doing it and if I was Mr. Obama, I would really check that committee's ties with that convicted monopolist as this is not the first time they do this trick. It doesn't really give a good image. Even MS themselves offer Flash or at least WMedia alternatives on their own site.
He's Bush the 3rd with Clinton's cabinet, talking like Clinton, acting like Bush
The AC is right, we're screwed either way
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.
Letting the white house's computers run for another four years.
Those running Windows 9x are out in the cold too.
Since I watch Joost shows sometimes on the Mac without having silverlight installed, I assume that it is not a requirement there either.
It is Intel only. Lots of people , especially G5 home/business users excluding big time gamers didn't upgrade to Intel yet. Apple knows this fact very well as they still ship iLife/iWork 09 as Universal binary. Adobe Flash 10 for example is both universal binary and recently SMP enabled for PPC dual G4s etc.
Like the dotcom boom days, MS can air a "exclusive Madonna concert" via silverlight, to make it popular and make people install it but this event isn't a Madonna concert or a Hollywood trailer. They couldn't convince their own OS users yet.
I did very well. Mac PPC means Macintosh PowerPC. You know, not everyone switched to Intel and MS left out PPC users on release of Silverlight 2.0 without any kind of explanation.
PPC on the desktop is a small market getting smaller by the day. Sorry, but thats the way it is.
Don't you think that the very point is that this is the *official* site we are talking about?
Oh my God, turn on the damn TV, it'll be on every frakking channel. I am so sick of techies having hissy attacks because every damn thing isn't instantly streamed to their iPhone or twittered to their PSP.
Can we not use Moonlight instead of MS to view the broadcast?
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.
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.
Open, Free Codecs that work everywhere are surprisingly non-existent. I'd like to see that change!
Last time I checked, Ogg Vorbis was open, free and cross-platform. It was also proposed as the standard for HTML5 precisely for these qualities.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=087800000005BUn
Point to a good mutli-file uploader that supports a mod_perl2 backend, not either PHP or ASP.NET? Make sure the said uploaded can be customized to make it easy to send meta-data along with the file upload. Make sure it is free and doesn't suck too.
Like the parent, I too was able to crank out a (rather ghetto) multi-file uploader that bolted right into the same backend hooks as the original form based one. In fact, the upload widget was my first dive into Silverlight because honestly, that is where improving things can yeild major returns in user-experience.
Those who can't support Silverlight can use the old form based one. Those can don't have it but whose platform can handle it will get a cute "hey man, install Silverlight2 and enjoy the sweetness" message they can choose to ignore.
Dont knock Silverlight. It makes it pretty damn simple to kick out widgets that can vastly improve the user experience for a good swath of your userbase. Life is great as you make sure that non-Silverlight visitors can do the same thing, even if it isn't as easy.
I use Ubuntu at home, and I use it by choice. We all now that if we're running FreeBSD of a PowerPC Mac there are certain things that aren't available for us either. It's the price we knowingly pay for the choices me make. We're the exceptions, not the rule.
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).
Mod me down if you must, but what, pray tell, is anticompetitive about Silverlight? How does it block competition? If anything, it is anti-anti-competitive in that it forces Adobe to improve.
More important, and more pro-competition is that it forces the luddites at the W3C to get their act together and produce something useful for once. For too long W3C has been able to produce crap because they assumed that developers had no choice but use HTML and CSS. Having two plugins that run on the majority of target browsers breaks that "monopoly" the W3C holds on developers. We now have a choice to develop complex, in-the-browser interfaces using something other then their standards.
For too long the W3C has held a monopoly over web developers. Hopefully Silverlight will light a fire in their ass because if it doesn't, the web will be stuck in the stone-age for quite some time to come.
Yeah, should be redundant.
You can watch in silverlight, or you can head over to youtube, or turn on your television. There are dozens of places to watch this thing. Article is misleading, parent is mislead.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
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.
Silverlight runs on Intel Mac's (PPC's are legacy... if you have a problem with that go talk to Apple, not Microsoft. Apple is notorious for pulling stuff like that).
It doesn't run on Linux or FreeBSD (does Flash run on FreeBSD? Never tried, actually).
The solution, provided you are willing to bear the cost (i.e. taxes) would be to offer the stream in a secondary format. Keep in mind though, you dont know what backend they are using, so it could either be easy to have two video streams, or it could be a major pain in the ass. Personally, I'd say they should do it. I can't stream Silverlight or Flash to my SageTV if it is embedded.
Since the [canvas] tag is a ways off, and so is anything else, maybe somebody should invent a new [link] tag like [link rel='streaming' codec='h.264' src='http://place'] so things like SageTV, MythTV and whatever can suck down the media without trying to embed a flash player or silverlight player. As long as the codec is widely supported, it would be really nice. The only trick is to figure out ways to splice in the 15-second ads into such things like you can do with the Flash/Silverlight players. I bet the backend can do that though.
You are misleading as well. The Obama team has been heavily focused on using the Internet, and their choice Internet deliver methods is very important. The choice to use Silverlight 2, and offer no alternative for users who cannot use that platform (PowerPC users, people with out of date computers, etc.), and to offer no non-streaming alternative (for people without reliable Internet connections, or who want a copy on their hard drive without worrying about copyright issues), indicates something about their "tech savvy campaign." The outsourced their content deliver to some company that sounds like the 2009 equivalent of a dot-com, and gave no consideration to any tech issues beyond what the latest buzzword is (hint: web enabled streaming media).
Yes, the TV option is still available, but this team has not given it much attention. This team is setting a precedent in streaming the proceedings, and future presidents will follow this example. My biggest concern is that, over the next decade, the ability to record a TV program will only be available to those who pay for "DVR service," likely locked down to prevent users from keeping copies without paying, and that if that happens, and these proceedings are streamed by websites like YouTube, people will lose their ability to keep personal copies of government proceedings. Most people will just shrug, but for some activists, the ability to record the government is important and should not be lost because of misguided efforts to be "tech savvy."
Palm trees and 8
Sorry to inform you, but your definition of "open" isn't in line with the RMS/FSF party line. Pretty much MPEG* has all kinds of patents that would exclude it from use. Theora and Vorbis are the only video/audio codecs that would most likely pass the RMS/FSF smell test.
You still need a way to either offer a second stream or embed the Vorbis/Theora stream into a browser. And you would have to require Windows and most likely Mac users to install both codecs.
No.
I think it's because it's an easy place to slam Microsoft.
Silverlight handled the Olympics which is an amazing feat. People who make decisions like to have previous successes to look at when choosing between similar options.
"You have two options
1) You can use a proprietary Adobe Flash based system which will work on 99% of all computers and used used by companies like Youtube.
or
2) you can use a proprietary Microsoft Silverlight based solution which will work on 98% of all computers. It was used in the US to stream all of the Olympics coverage live. Also it's been successfully used by Netflix to stream high quality footage to both Macs and PCs.
"Thanks...both look like good options but netflix is higher quality video than Youtube right?"
"Yes."
"Go with the netflix/olympics one then!"
Microsoft's definition of cross-platform: Vista and Windows XP. Anything that threatens the hegemony of Windows must be destroyed. Standards are for losers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Seriously, Barack Obama did not sit down and say, "Man, I really dig this Silverlight stuff. Maybe we should stream the whole inauguration in it."
The bottom line is that the person who made the decision to use Silverlight was probably the same person who made that decision for the Democratic National Convention. Most likely, the guy/gal was hired because he/she had Microsoft Certs and experience. I know a lot of very smart people who could very well have been tabbed for the same thing that are Microsoft people, and they probably would have made the same decision because they don't think beyond "this is a cool technology and it makes it easier for me to do what I want".
If you think it's a money thing, you don't know crap. Microsoft gives to both the Democratic AND Republican party. I know a lot of very hardcore Republicans who work for them. Yes, I know, I know a lot of people that I'm painting in a really bad light here. Apple, however, gave a lot as well. So did Google. And they tend to support Democratic and Independent causes more often than Republican.
Look, one thing you have to know is if Barack Obama had a whole lot less on his plate...after all, the economy is going down the tubes, followed by the environment, we've got wars that we're fighting and we don't really know why we're still fighting them...costly occupations...our schools are going to pot and good jobs are getting really, really scarce. If that stuff wasn't all on his plate, and he knew that Apple and Linux people wouldn't be able to stream the inauguration, he'd be upset and ask to talk to whoever made that call. As it is, it was probably some guy that was hired that was probably held over from the DNC stuff. Maybe it was one of his paid staffers.
Write a letter. Get your feelings out there and make it known. Don't just whine silently to yourself. If they get word, then some staffer might get a talking to. Really now...if you wanted this to be streamed using more open/cross platform technology, you should have started complaining about it when their tech team would have had some time to offer an alternative.
Look, you choose to use an operating system built by essentially hobbyists in their spare time. Not everything is gonna work--that is a feature not a bug. And while I hate to say it, if you dont like that, perhaps you could dedicate some of your time to Moonlight so that you *can* use Silverlight stuff. Don't expect people to use their non-free time to develop software for a free operating system.
And yes, I do contribute to the free operating system I use in production environments--FreeBSD. I've contributed many ports to build and install CPAN modules. If something isn't in the ports tree and I need it, I don't just expect somebody else to put it there nor do I bitch, moan or cry--I take the time out of my day and write the damn port myself. That is how open source works--you give back to it and everybody benefits. If I didn't give back, I'd be a leech. That is also one of the biggest flaws in open source, you have to have the skills *to* give back, and not everybody does.
Silverlight exists, it is an amazing platform, and soon enough it will become widely adopted. Accept it as fact, and either either get used to being left out or get started working on Moonlight or something like it. Calling me a "Microsoft fanboy douche" will not result in the open source faeries giving you Silverlight support. You have to make it work!
Getting shit to work is what Linux is all about (or at least was all about). Back in the day, your only reward was the pride you got by getting $IMPOSSIBLE_DEVICE to work on Linux! Now I guess Linux is all about the politics of getting something for nothing. Sad. ...Now get the hell off my lawn!
...what antics will ensue when all the Windows users with older systems (sans Silverlight 2) get the message to download and install it as the inauguration begins?
How many prerequisite patches and service packs must be downloaded and reboots must be performed? And how much of the ceremony will be left to see once the install is done?
Have gnu, will travel.
According to TFA the parent linked to (the FAQ), the patent agreement appears to comply rather nicely with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (which are identical to the requirements OSI published) since according to the FAQ, "You are free to download VP3, use it free of charge, implement it in a for-sale product, implement it in a free product, make changes to the source and distribute those changes, or print the source code out and wallpaper your spare room with it. "
$ make available
Whoever the tech folks who work for Obama understand the need for having a FOSS option. Change.gov is licensed under creative commons, so somebody got the memo that user freedom, the web as a commons and all that is a good thing. The Silverlight thing is probably being viewed by the Obama team as "just another option," but they have made a good faith effort to cater to the (for lack of a better catchall term) FOSS community--at least better than any previous USA presidential administration.
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
Real and MS started making exclusivity deal, forcing to install Real, which then took over all media types on your computer, even those it couldn't handle.
And then there was sadness.
But some day flash came along, at first it was just a huge waste of electrons, serving only to make pointless "intro animations" which were annoyances that had to be suffered only long enough to find and click on the "skip" button... until youTube made popular a way of embedding video in a page using flash that made it usable.
And the peasants rejoiced.
But MS saw that there was profit being made, and thought to itself "I want that profit for myself!", and so from the raped corpse of a unicorn, it carved the unholy horror know as silverlight.
And the peasants felt the tinge of sadness come back to their browser video experience.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'll bet there are more windows desktop machines that can't run silverlight than linux ones. That's my point.
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