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Watch the Obama Inauguration With Moonlight

Posted by timothy on from the join-this-program-already-in-progress dept.

bigmonachus writes "Miguel de Icaza has posted on his blog that linux users will be able to watch the Obama inauguration using Moonlight. Just go to the Moonlight download page to get it. He also said that some Microsoft engineers worked hard last night to make this happen."

8 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. A point for MS by uberhipduck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And we thought all MS Engineers were evil. My hope in humanity has been restored.

    1. Re:A point for MS by murdocj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, you are overly cynical. Let's face it, for some folks MS just can't win... if they implement something early, it's a trap, if they implement it just in time, they are just making the gesture, and if they don't implement it, they are trying to squash the competition. How about just appreciating the fact that some MS employees work hard to support a platform that competes directly with their own?

  2. The best way to watch the inauguration by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was on the National Mall for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, so let me suggest that the absolute best way to watch the Presidential inauguration is to watch it on the news that evening.

    They'll cut out all the boring crap. You don't have to spend all morning standing around in the freezing cold. And you don't have to miss work.

  3. MS makes a very compelling case by AvitarX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just downloaded it, it was a 64-bit XPI.

    Way easier than installing flash, now I am curious if it will work.

    Additionally, the client is open source, and Adobe has wielded the software patent hammer in the past (against flash I think even). So it's not easy to call MS particularly the greater evil here.

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  4. Re:Change but not all change is good... by palegray.net · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is just a hack for a one time occasion.

    Ummm... I just took the ten seconds to install the Moonlight plugin for Firefox 3 (running under Ubuntu 8.04 i386). After I'm done watching the presidential inauguration, what precisely is stopping me from continuing to use the plugin to interact with other Silverlight-based content?

    Listen, I'm a fairly serious open source developer myself, and I'm excited about a new technology that attempts to rectify some of the shortcomings we've all suffered from with Flash. Why can't you just give credit where it's due? Feel free to trot out your recent open source software engineering contributions...

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  5. Re:Or not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I suppose that this, codeplex and their other efforts could be all a big plot to win mindshare from OSS developers and users and convert them to MS, then they'll break compatibility again, but really if they think that will succeed, they're living in a fairy tale world.

    Really? I see their Silverlight/moonlight cooperation as being the same strategy of DirectX/Internet Explorer, as a second chance to try and take over the Web once and for all.

    I'm never installing anything from Microsoft again. And if your website requires it, you just lost a customer.

  6. Re:Oh God no! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh please. Give it a rest.

    It is a historic occasion in that the first African American president of the United States is being inaugurated.

    Millions of African Americans are witnessing something that many of them never in their wildest dreams believed they'd see in their lifetimes.

    I didn't vote for the man, regardless of that he won, and as of this afternoon he will be my president. I am happy to witness this historic moment myself and I am happy for those people for whom this event is a dream come true.

  7. Re:Or not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, the main reason the free flash implementations are lagging, is that they have been reverse engineering the format, unlike the Moonlight people, who have specs to work from.

    There were specs for Flash too, but until very recently, the license for those specs specifically forbid using them to implement a viewer.

    Because of this, even though flash player is the most crappy piece of software I've ever seen on any Linux machine, the free alternatives still haven't been able to beat it.

    So yes, Microsoft has been more open. Not just more open, but so much more open that they ended up forcing Adobe to become more open. Competition
    for the flash format is good, and Adobe opening up the specs after Silverlight appeared is proof of this.