Slashdot Mirror
Watch the Obama Inauguration With Moonlight
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."
And we thought all MS Engineers were evil. My hope in humanity has been restored.
"Microsoft engineers worked hard last night to make this happen."
Didn't they say the same thing about Windows XP a week before release?
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.
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
To be honest, between Silverlight/Moonlight and Flash, Silverlight/Moonlight is obviously the superior technology. It's also, ironically, the more open of the two.
And we've known for a long, long time that Flash was junk. It's just that now that Microsoft has their own competing technology, all of a sudden we're like "What's wrong with Flash?"
Seriously. Just because you or I may not like Microsoft, you have to give props where props are due.
My blog
Silverlight is just a pleasure to program in. Being a subset of dotnet you have just a gazillion great classes at the top of your fingers for you to use in any language you want that just supports .NET.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I love Linux and run it on many computers at home, and have never been particularly fond of Microsoft, but you really have to give this to them. It's more open than what Adobe have to offer and they're being far more cooperative than Adobe generally were. Remember, mono/moonlight are *open source*.. not even just a binary blob provided by Microsoft.
They've repeatedly helped the Mono developers and have truly made an effort to set a new precedent with many of their .NET technologies. In general, they're far more open (in specification and implementation) than their previous development efforts. Their new file formats aren't perfect, but they're certainly better than what came before.
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. Honestly, I do think this is an attempt to be a bit more cooperative, even for business reasons. The best thing we can do as Linux users is support actions that facilitate open platform and do our best to stifle technologies that are clearly an attempt to do the opposite. For example, if you work in a MS shop, try to get them to use their more open products over their closed ones.
What I think this is truly indicating is that OSS (and Apple) are hurting Microsoft's profit, and they're doing their best to hold their position in a more cross-platform market.
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...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
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.
While Obama may be the first dark skinned African American, applying the "first African American president" to him could be seen as discounting the heritage of past presidents.
Mij
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.
You can also just use vlc: vlc 'http://msstudios-chan2-wsx.wm.llnwd.net/msstudios_chan1_wsx?MSWMExt=.asf' or vlc 'http://87.248.216.216:80/msstudios_chan1_wsx?MSWMExt=.asf'
This way you get fullscreen, stutter-free sound and video without agreeing to any license agreements or burning a hole in your processor... and you don't have to install anything besides vlc (but that was already installed, wasn't it?)
--frank[at]unternet.org
http://www.pic2009.org/page/content/linuxplayer - works fine moonlight link - http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/
I do not know which extension is conflicting with the mono extension, but Firefox now takes over 4 minutes to start up, and the same amount of time to load google. I thought that it was locked up, but I decided to sit it out to see if it would work. It did, after four minutes! Kubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.5.
I have a few extensions, so with 4+ minute startup times it is slow going finding out where the conflict is. I use the all in one sidebar, autoauth cookieculler, flashblock, link alert, locationbar limit, locationbar2, menu editor, no squint, openbook, repagination, scrapbook, searchwith, stylish, tagsifter, text link, tiny menu, tree style tab, vimperator, and web developer. If you use any of these, then be forewarned!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Built-in optimization for multimedia. Streams better. Go to the Singtel Grid Girls site; you'll see 60 videos being loaded in one go (5 * 4 grid with three states for each girl). Not a Flash guy myself, but I'm told streaming it all is a bitch in Flash. Not so in Silverlight.
More than mere navel gazing.
Fortunately for you, you don't have to install something from microsoft, you have to install something from an open source project. Granted, they lag behind, but its hard to have lock-in when they are pseudo-complete competing implementations for "left-out platforms".
Even though its a different stream, the fact that the website was willing to put up support for other systems sets an excellent precedent.
Bush out and MS being nice, on the same day? Did I smoke a really fat doobie last night?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?