Major League Baseball Dumps Silverlight For Flash

christian.einfeldt writes "This week, Major League Baseball will open without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back-end operations for MLB and several other leagues and sporting events. The change was decided on last year but was set to be rolled out this spring. Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces). Baseball's opening day last year was plagued by Silverlight instability, with many users unable to log on and others unable to watch games. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."

Comments

Why make the leap in the first place?

[XorNand]

I wish the article would have explained why MLB went with Silverlight in the first place. What kind of arm-twisting (or hooker-and-blow-providing) could MS have possibly done to convince a company to take such a major financial gamble? For the most part, Silverlight is largely unproven tech and--to add insult to injury--proprietary. Can someone explain the appeal?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[LWATCDR]

I can guess why.
1. Microsoft probably offered a bunch of technical help.
2. Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash. I have not looked at Flex yet but Flash is nasty.
3. Probably thought that they would get better performance out of it.

Flash is in this case is the Devil that we know. Silverlight is the Devil we don't so Flash will probably win this fight.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Romancer]

Depends on who it needed to appeal to.

If it's management, it only needs to work in the demo and be new and shiny.

If it's the IT dept it only needs to be stable and easily managed. Oh, and do the job.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[tpgp]

-to add insult to injury--proprietary.

Flash is no less proprietary.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Civil_Disobedient]

The only thing I can think is that perhaps they were planning a redesign anyway and some pointy-head got their devs thinking about this "new Silverlight thing" he read about in the latest Ass-Hatting Executives, Monthly.

Now, let's look at the request headers, shall we?

Server: Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1

Hmm. Looks like somebody higher-up caught wind of the price tag for running a Microsoft shop and decided on another approach. Can't say I blame him. Java p0wns enterprise webapp-land.

And for all the hatred that Adobe gets around here, Flash is undeniably ubiquitous. Everyone has Flash. Christ, my cell phone has Flash. It's easy as shit to develop for (particularly if you're adept in JavaScript), runs everywhere, and it's fast as hell.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[molarmass192]

Oh really?!? Please post a link to the Sliverlight video file format specification. Here is the one for Flash:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/

Go ahead, surprise me ...

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Locke2005]

Maybe because Adobe refused to port Flash 8, 9, or 10 to any platform other than Windows and Mac OS? My Wii only runs Flash 7, my phone can't handle Flash, and I expect the browser in my DSi won't handle Flash either. What was needed was an open platform that would provide the functionality of Flash but be ported to every browser out there. I was hoping Silverlight would be that platform, but I guess it is not yet ready for prime time. And if "Flash is already on 99% of computers out there", then why did I just have to upgrade both my Mac and PC to Flash 10? (Disney's Pixie Hollow requires Flash 10, and I have an eight-year old daughter.)

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[grahamd0]

Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash. I have not looked at Flex yet but Flash is nasty.

Sure, the Flash IDE is a toy, the timeline is only useful for simple animation, and Actionscript 1 and 2 are crap, but Flash isn't bad at all if you're working on a pure code-based Actionscript 3 project.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[gardyloo]

I wish the article would have explained why MLB went with Silverlight in the first place

There was a mixup and they thought they were going with the Fleshlight.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[owlnation]

Yeah, that's a good question. I suspect that MS offered a lot to get them to use it. MLB.TV was the only reason I installed silverlight. I suspect I am not alone. If MLB offered a choice between the two I'd never have installed it. I've yet to come across another site where it's necessary. Now I can safely uninstall it, and most likely never need it again. I had endless problems with it -- especially on my Mac. Silverlight simply did not work well.

The new flash player for MLB.TV this year is a vast improvement on their previous efforts. There's still a few bugs in it, but for the most part it's better.

That said, Flash needs a competitor. It seriously needs one. It's astonishing that it's had so much market share for so long.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash.

Do you honestly think that had anything to do with management's decision? If there is a technologically viable reason for a tech that management adopts, it's purely coincidental.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight FAQ

Silverlight supports what users ask it to support.

Oh, and a link to one of the formats it supports

WMV file format

pwnd

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it took much, the MLB is really poorly run. I have first hand experience in developing product or them, and they don't seem to give two shits about quality or user experience. Fans seem to just be consumers in their eyes...

Some marginal short term gain was probably enough to convince them.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Trogre]

An all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii for the product demonstration?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

SVG OMG!

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[joocemann]

I wish the article would have explained why MLB went with Silverlight in the first place. What kind of arm-twisting (or hooker-and-blow-providing) could MS have possibly done to convince a company to take such a major financial gamble? For the most part, Silverlight is largely unproven tech and--to add insult to injury--proprietary. Can someone explain the appeal?

Also, most people don't have or use or even WANT to use Silverlight.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is no less proprietary.

I beg to differ.

http://www.openscreenproject.org/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/adobes-open-screen-project-write-once-flash-everywhere/

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[SenFo]

This "proprietary" argument is getting old.

Silverlight is an open-standard. While Microsoft doesn't actively develop a Linux client, they have collaborated with Novel to bring the Moonlight project to the Linux and other Unix/X11 platforms.

Granted, the Moonlight 2.0 implementation is behind Microsoft's implementation, with the Moonlight Roadmap indicating a planed release date of September 2009. While this is frustrating to end users and developers, I don't think it's fair to call Silverlight "proprietary".

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Derek Pomery]

.... only Windows and OSX?
What about Linux? Adobe ported the 64 bit version of Flash 10 to Linux first, and their Flash support is quite a bit better than "Moonlight"
Although, to their credit, the Moonlight team seems to be making more progress than gnash.

But, I hear you. Shame IE8 had no interest in or - much less or even SVG.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[McBeer]

Here's another one: Silverlight supports the h.264 standard for video.

Heck there's an OSS version of silverlight

Face it, something Microsoft has created is more "open" then its competition.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

I interviewed with them a few years ago.

MLB.com had all their video in WMV and a pre-exisitng Windows Media Server infrastructure, because they were very concerned about rights management.

Because they were a big Flash shop, they had to do a lot of mixing and matching Flash and JS to work with Windows Media player.

When Silverlight came out, it looked like it would be an all-in-one deal that would let them retain their existing video infrastructure and clips, and be able to better utilize them inside the RIA's they build.

They gave it a shot because it cost them almost nothing, MLB.com is rolling in dough and gets free stuff all the time because they're high profile.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Derek Pomery]

Frig. I thought /. was clever enough to escape tags in "plain old text" mode. Didn't notice this "extrans" option. Shows how much I use it. *previews*

That should have read:
But, I hear you. Shame IE8 had no interest in <video> or <audio> - much less <canvas> or even SVG.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[pherthyl]

>> Flash is no less proprietary.

Technically true, but still less of an issue than Silverlight. Silverlight is proprietary and owned by the company with a near monopoly on consumer operating systems. Adobe is proprietary but they have no reason to prefer one platform over another (aside from marketshare of course), and so are very unlikely to sabotage other platforms at any point in the future.

On the other hand, it might be very beneficial for Microsoft to sabotage other platforms (and they already are, just by not even offering an _official_ linux player).

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can safely uninstall it. That said, Flash needs a competitor. It seriously needs one.

Flash has a competitor. You're removing it to save 2mb of hard disk space. Idiot.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[ameyer17]

Linux?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[sbeckstead]

Now if we can just get everyone to stop using Flash. MY cell phone doesn't have flash and I don't want that crap. Most of the crashes I have with all of my browsers are flash related. Flash is crap, silverlight is crap, there is a better way.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Grishnakh]

Flash is in this case is the Devil that we know. Silverlight is the Devil we don't so Flash will probably win this fight.

Not true anymore. Apparently, Silverlight is now the Devil that MLBAM has gotten to know, and they decided they hated him so much that they went back to the other devil they already know, Flash.

A high-profile reverse-course like this has got to be really bad news for MS. You'd think that, in trying to unseat Flash, they would have spent a little more effort making sure everything worked just right so that people wouldn't try it out and hate it, and go right back to what they were using before. Pissing off your early (and high-profile) adopters is NOT a good way to run a business and build marketshare.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling that they probably went to Flex not Flash which none the less produces content that is played in FlashPlayer. Flash is now on ActionScript 3 and Flex IS open-source and you can get a free mxml compiler and so far from Flash in terms of RIA creation that it is hardly fair to consider it Flash. I know the article says they went to Flash, but trust me if they are smart, they are using Flash for animation and Flex for creating internet experiences. Flex is an open standard with a strong company behind it. Adobe acquiring Macromedia put the Flash technology in the right hands, and frankly Microsoft got in the game too late and their negative brand recognition hardly makes them an underdog likely to pull ahead of this particular race. However, it makes sense that the Microsoft empire would have the resources and connections to make a deal with this big a player in the first place. They probably had existing connections and they just got in first. Its good to know though that at the end of the day quality and stable user experience are what are driving the decisions and not merely hopping on the latest technology bandwagon.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you should look a bit harder, moonlight or whatever the fuck they call it now is useless marketing crap. Or at least it was last year when baseball opened up, using this 'ready tech'. So whatever if its better now too fucking bad you missed the boat jerkwads.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[MouseR]

Flash is as proprietary as SilverLight.

Dont get me wrong. I hate Flash and for one am glad my iPhone is not plagued by flash content.

But besides SL being unproven, is no more mediocre or evil than Flash.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Darkness404]

Maybe because Adobe refused to port Flash 8, 9, or 10 to any platform other than Windows and Mac OS?

What in the world are you talking about??? I currently have Flash 10 installed and I'm using Linux. And yes it is officially supported, on the other hand Moonlight, the OSS Slilverlight implementation which is the only way to get it to work on Linux really has no backing from MS and is behind the official Siliverlight plugin.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Thousand]

How about you take a second to know you're talking about before you talk about it?

Flash Player support for h.264 and The Gnash OSS Flash Player

Face it, Flash isn't as evil as you want it to be. And Microsoft has a hell of a way to go to catch up.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[MyLongNickName]

Are there any decent free platforms for developing for Flash using actionscript? For a hobbyist like me I can't afford to plunk the change down for their IDE.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[PopeRatzo]

On the other hand, it might be very beneficial for Microsoft to sabotage other platforms

Damn them for what they might do.

I understand the puppy my dog might have someday might grow up to bite me. I hate him for that.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if we can just get everyone to stop using Flash. MY cell phone doesn't have flash and I don't want that crap.

Where ya from, boy?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[PopeRatzo]

Java p0wns enterprise webapp-land.

Let's hope that IBM's decision to pass on the purchase of Sun, and Sun's precarious existence, doesn't change that.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[HangingChad]

I wish the article would have explained why MLB went with Silverlight in the first place.

Here's what I've seen. The reps bypass the IT department and pitch directly to the execs. Every IT shop...except mine...has a couple Microsoft cheerleaders. So between the former Ms. Arizona sales rep and rah-rah squad on staff, management starts believing it'll actually work. Most management types don't understand the concept of scale. Just because you can make a product work in a demo or for a small number of users, doesn't mean it will work for an audience of thousands. That's a surprisingly difficult concept for management types. They just saw it work, the rep with the nice legs showed them half a dozen web sites already doing it. Why are you telling me it won't work?

My experience has been that Microsoft delivers great products for small to medium size sites but you'd never what to build a really big system on their platform. And that cross-platform compatibility is just a concept in Redmond. They try to tie everything to their platform. Just my 0.02, YMMV. But I can say, and have the numbers to back it up, that I can build enterprise scale systems for the cost of the hardware and developer salaries with competitive time to market.

Not that I'd ever use that fact to say NEENER, NEENER, NEENER to legions of people heavily invested in MSFT. No, sir, not me. [insert innocent look here]

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Adobe needs to stop paying their sockpuppets in meth, seriously...

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[PopeRatzo]

Also, most people don't have or use or even WANT to use Silverlight.

And you have come to that conclusion based on exhaustive research of the preferences and use-patterns of all the people who are currently wearing your underwear.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[RedK]

Except right now, it only supports WMV, WMA and MP3. That's pretty far from your assertion that it supports what the user wants. From your FAQ :

Windows Media Audio and Video 7,8,9 (WMA, WMAPro, WMV/VC-1), as well as MP3 audio. Microsoft has announced support for H.264/MPEG AVC and AAC playback in a future version of Silverlight coming in early 2009. We will explore the need for additional formats and codecs based on customer feedback and market need over time. Our philosophy around media formats support is "choice". It is important to note that Silverlight is a format-agnostic RIA environment that should support any media format that users require. The addition of native H.264/AAC video and audio decode inside of Silverlight is all about providing choice to customers.

So basically, either you have to ask Microsoft to support it or maybe write support yourself, which you'll probably then have to distribute to everyone. Yeah, way to be open...

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Failed to learn your lesson heh ?

If the past is any indication of the future,
try researching DR-DOS - Win.com as a start, IF you want an eye opener

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[PopeRatzo]

because they were very concerned about rights management.

Considering they threaten to sue anyone who uses the term "World Series", that doesn't surprise me.

Every time I hear some poor minimum-wage sports radio announcer have to use the term "The Fall Classic" when he really means the Series, I spit on Major League Baseball.

Next, they'll want me to call White Sox Park "US Cellular Field" instead of the canonical "Comiskey Field".

Which reminds me, has anybody else noticed the amazing discipline that McDonalds has forced sportscasters to exercise now that All-Americans have become "McDonalds All-Americans".

During every broadcast I watched of the NCAA tourney, whenever there was mention of the top high-school players, it was always "McDonalds All-Americans" and nobody even choked on it once.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[grahamd0]

I like FlashDevelop, but it's windows only.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash. I have not looked at Flex yet but Flash is nasty.

Sure, the Flash IDE is a toy, the timeline is only useful for simple animation, and Actionscript 1 and 2 are crap, but Flash isn't bad at all if you're working on a pure code-based Actionscript 3 project.

Seconded.
AS3 on FlexBuilder 3 (Eclipse based) is actually a decent environment to work on.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hated 32bit flash running on my 64bit GNU/Linux. It was SLOW like hell.

Then flash 64bit came out. I couldn't believe it, the super slow flash turned to be oh super fast flash. Really. Sometimes it "just" crash (not often), but its a really fast piece of software. I'm impressed.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[bondsbw]

So basically, either you have to ask Microsoft to support it or maybe write support yourself, which you'll probably then have to distribute to everyone. Yeah, way to be open...

Oh, that's ENTIRELY WRONG of them!!! I can't imagine what would have happened if, say, Linux had been created with such ideals...

So basically, either you have to ask Linus to support it or maybe write support yourself, which you'll probably then have to distribute to everyone. Yeah, way to be open...

Wow... I'm glad that never happened.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[TheNetAvenger]

True points, but Flash on Linux from Adobe is less 'open' than Silverlight from Microsoft. Did you happen to notice that Adobe used what they had opened and jumped through some licensing hoops to get you their 'proprietary' Flash player?

Microsoft has considered doing the same, but it would involve either opening up the Vista API to open source, or make them shove together a fully closed solution with less functionality.

Microsoft turning Silverlight over t Mono and the Moonlight project is a win win, as Microsoft doesn't have to open their precious 'IP' that is non-Silverlight related from the Vista APIs, and yet it gives users a full open source solution.

If you want to support open source, Silverlight is your donkey to bet on, if you want Adobe semi-open solutions, keep using Flash and be happy.

I can remember when people were in love with Apple for opening up Darwin and the OS X kernel as required for the BSD and MACH licensing, but when it came to OS X and the 'Apple' portions, people realized the opening of Darwin was to get the rights to the code and also 'use' the community and repackage everything back under the upper levels of OS X and a sue happy Apple.

Adobe didn't make their Linux Flash player to be 'good' to the Linux community, they made it to regain control of the Linux community that was going the way of the open 'Flash' players that Adobe had no control over. And apparently their 'play' to win the Linux users worked, as you are an example of a Flash fan happily installing a non-open Flash player that has full Adobe control.

- MS has virtually no control over moonlight, and also seems pretty good about providing the mono team with what they need to replicate both Silverlight and other .NET features.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Ilgaz]

Or can't even if they need to. They dropped PowerPC OS X support right as version 2.0 of plugin.

People keep telling "PowerPC is dead", well it is dying but not at degree of dropping support of it as early as last year. When Steve Jobs said "We are switching to Intel", PowerPC macs showing the keynote with Quicktime didn't instantly turn off and never came back you know :) Some Intel Mac owners cheering doesn't see what is coming if, by any chance, Silverlight becomes successful as Flash. Old time Mac users who lived/lives the Windows Media Disaster clearly knows what I talk about. Lets not forget the $200K priced Windows Media server installations ended up not being able to sell content (having DRM) to Apple OS X users.

It proves one thing to me if you ask. They have problems compiling it for non x86 platforms which is pretty alarming since the handheld platform runs ARM and will keep running ARM, which has same "endian" issue (!) etc. If a plugin daring to mess with Adobe Flash can't run on anything other than x86, I am really speechless.

One must also ask, where is mobile support? I mean, at least for Windows Mobile. Adobe currently gives Developers freely distributable flash lite (current version) so they can code "apps" which are in fact tiny flash containers. I have used Flash LE on Symbian S60, on not so superb handset (Nokia E65, business phone) and no, my battery didn't melt.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[TheNetAvenger]

What scares me about your post is how certain you are, and how wrong you are at the same time...

Silverlight inherently supports H.264 and VC-1 - the two HD standards, and you are probably happily watching a movie on your BluRay player that is even VC-1 encoded as it is the preferred encoding format for many studios. (VC-1 = WMV)

Additionally, Silverlight supports additional truly open formats, not some format solely controlled by one company like Adobe and FLV. (BTW Adobe Flash Video, even HD is horrid at best compared to Silverlight.)

Also to note, Silverlight3 allows for virtually any codec to be used.

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx#whatsnew

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[ianare]

Actually Adobe released their 64bit version of flash 10 for linux before any other.

So far Flash doesn't run on non-intel architectures, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an ARM version at some point in the near future

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nschubach]

Agreed. I used Flashdevelop professionally and it's far better than most IDEs I've come across including Sepy. Sepy is nice, but it's aging poorly. Hopefully, FD will get the supposed Mono/Linux client in the back lot of the forum working soonish.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Ilgaz]

Open Standard like VC-1 you mean? Or Office XML?

If I was a Linux user, I would demand official, same feature level (not 99%) support just like Adobe Flash provides. Who the hell are they really? Why should I rely on Mono team? They ship a plugin to race with Flash. Can you really imagine the size of Flash?

The day MS does ship a thing or creates a standard which will work equally or better on any other OS rather than Windows, I'd say they finally decided to become a software company again. Until then? I stick with Flash and REALLY open standards from companies who has no interest rather than marketing their product.

I was one of the guys who said "Lets be objective, lets see what it does before bitching about it" and it gave promising results in 1.0 for OS X. It was just EULA which bugged me a bit. You know what happened next? They dropped support to MY processor architecture. That was the time I said "So long", rm -rf Silverlight Plugin and never looked back.

If Linux guys keep thanking to companies who doesn't really care enough to pack a binary plugin for their platform, Ubuntu etc. won't really matter. Linux/Wine/Dual Booting/Virtual Machine schizophrenia will continue. Same for OS X though Mac users attitude is a bit different.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[ckaminski]

What is this crazy hatred for Flash? Yeah, I know it's overdone for Menus and Ads and all that crap and "Shock-The-Monkey", but without it we wouldn't have youtube, redtube, pornotube and all the other x-tubes.

I don't get it?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[joocemann]

I have an extensive group of friends, and despite your accusations, none of them are wearing my underwear.

All of those that use computers come from a variety of computer-use scenarios, yet the vast consensus I speak of is derived from a meta-analysis of the following general points:

- What the hell is Silverlight?
- I've never been to a site that needs it.
- A microsoft product? I'm not installing it.
- Umm, no. Flash is better and everyone uses it already.
- Silverlight is just a wanna-be flash.

Let me help:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/080509-105719
http://www.riapedia.com/2008/04/14/how_many_visitors_have_silverlight_installed

I'd say 1.5M vs 12M is a big difference. Silverlight is a distraction..... Focus Mr Ratzo, focus!

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nschubach]

Not to mention, Gnash (in my more recent experiences with Moonlight and Gnash for work) is much more stable and has far better support for SWFs than Moonlight has for Silverlight files currently. Moonlight and Mono will always suffer from feature limitations. Developers will want to use the latest and greatest Microsoft has to offer (because they made it, duh!) and Mono will always lag behind and not support that video feed or app you want to launch.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nschubach]

You can at least have a say in how your pup is raised. Silverlight on the other hand... You will get the puppy they give you, and it will be trained by someone who wants your money.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[TheNetAvenger]

Right Now it only? Really?

You need to go look up the specifications for Silverlight 2 for yourself.

Additionally, you make WMV sound like it is the old closed WMV of 10 years ago.

WMV = VC1 - which is one of the HD codec standards, probably used on the majority of your BluRay Discs if you own any.

VC1 (i.e. WMV) is also used by several cable and ohter media distribution operators for SD and HD content delivery.

Also, just to put things in perspective, as of last year, there was more video streamed on the Internet using VC1/WMV than any other format. Yes, even eclipsing Flash content on all the YouTube type sites.

New Audio/Video providers are not looking to Flash, for several reasons, quality being the number one and the lack of video and audio features they can provide to their users.

Imagine if Netflix Instant Streaming was based on Flash, it would have failed, with horrid video quality, buffering nightmares, dropped clients, lost server connections, no accelerated assistance to smooth or recreate the image, and on and on and on.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nschubach]

"MS has virtually no control over moonlight, and also seems pretty good about providing the mono team with what they need to replicate both Silverlight and other .NET features."

Then why is it not feature complete and never has been?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[JackieBrown]

Cool. And in 2010 or 11 when mono supports it, that might be interesting.

At least adobe uses it's own resources to develop the linux plugin. (Wow. I never thought I would say anything positive about adobe's attitude toward linux.)

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

This "proprietary" argument is getting old.

Silverlight is an open-standard. While Microsoft doesn't actively develop a Linux client, they have collaborated with Novel to bring the Moonlight project to the Linux and other Unix/X11 platforms.

Your post is misinformation.

The Moonlight implementation of Silverlight comes with open source codecs that can't actually play much of Silverlight video.

One is required to download a binary blob codec from Microsoft if one wants to actually see almost anything with Moonlight.

Quintessentially proprietary.

Meanwhile, the specification for flash is open, and other parties are encouraged to write codecs for their platforms.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/adobes-open-screen-project-write-once-flash-everywhere/
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

You cannot get more open than that.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[timmarhy]

umm don't kid yourself into thinking IT will make the sane decision based on the best technical choice - look at the dribble that comes out of slashdot.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[martinX]

Fleshlight.

You SOB. I just took a swig of Coke when I read that.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[MouseR]

For all the tubes out there, you could have done it with QuickTime, AVI or any other real video format that's not riddled with single-threaded-nes, non-hardware-accelerated-nes, bug-riddened crap.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[ckaminski]

chirp, chirp... in 1999?

Do you remember the nightmare that was Quicktime back then?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[dudpixel]

Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash. I have not looked at Flex yet but Flash is nasty.

Sure, the Flash IDE is a toy, the timeline is only useful for simple animation, and Actionscript 1 and 2 are crap, but Flash isn't bad at all if you're working on a pure code-based Actionscript 3 project.

I agree with this. Having used flex/actionscript3 recently it is very easy to learn/use, even on linux - and worked great. Admittedly I was only doing a simple game but as a programmer I was impressed at how easy it was to get up and running.

Find a good text editor that does syntax highlighting for actionscript (even as2 highlighting will work ok) and just use the console-based compiler for generating the swf files.

I never liked flash before - and I'm still not a fan of websites coded entirely in flash, but I'm starting to become a fan of flash programming and the web apps it can potentially produce :)

I did look at silverlight but the linux plugin (moonlight) is a long way from compatibility with the windows one (2 versions behind!), and also I saw the term ".NET" and decided I'd see what flash was like these days...and I'm glad I did. :) The flex SDK (including flex/actionscript compiler) is free so you can develop flash on linux/mac/windows and its free. This is a huge plus for me.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

A sort-of open player. Great. How do you author your files? Show me a genuine open source Flash IDE, in the class of NetBeans or Eclipse, or a rock-solid compilier, such as GCC, then I'll be impressed. The player just helps to promote vendor lock-in to the IDE. Yippie.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a technologically viable reason...

...DON'T FUCK WITH BASEBALL.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Ilgaz]

Did Apple/Real Networks really change their attitude in 2009? OK, real respects a lot to consumer privacy now and they support open source, with real stuff (not just promises) but if you think about why Flash video has become successful , you will be amazed that nothing has changed.

Things got even worsened now. Apple tries to bundle iTunes to people landing to standard www.apple.com/quicktime , the size of download and install is gigantic, there is still stupid "qt_task" installed etc. Windows users really, really go nuts when they see another thing added to startup.

Real Networks, ignoring the very good feedback they get from Apple users (because it is plain player, has always been) still tries to "do all" with their Windows version and fail miserably. Not to forget they still keep that "Real Announcements" junk.

We ended up having gigantic flv files embedded to web pages acting like "streaming". Hell, it is not really different from embedded mpeg of 1994. What happened to UDP? What happened to intelligent stream speed switching? Well content providers and users doesn't care since Flash is always single click, 1 mb install not adding anything to startup. Can you blame them?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[gullevek]

Well sorry to hear that Mr.iPhone user ;)

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[tobiasly]

And yes it is officially supported, on the other hand Moonlight, the OSS Slilverlight implementation which is the only way to get it to work on Linux really has no backing from MS

No backing from Microsoft? You sure about that? I would call releasing their video codecs for use by Moonlight and publishing a covenant not to sue Moonlight users to be pretty far from "no backing".

Granted, this is Microsoft's version of playing nice so of course the whole covenant issue is really just a wedge to drive portions of the OSS community against each other, but I think it's difficult to assert that Adobe is being more open than Microsoft here.

When it comes down to it, both companies are going to be only as open as absolutely necessary to help promote their format. Of course hopefully SVG and HTML5 features like <video> and <canvas> tags etc. will make the whole point moot if all the non-IE browsers can gain critical mass to force Microsoft into supporting them. Then we'll see both companies in the position Sun is now with Java: wishing they had truly opened up their formats before it was 10 years too late.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Phase Shifter]

Did Apple/Real Networks really change their attitude in 2009?

Agreed. I've never been happy with Windows versions of Apple software.

Pick two out of three: It doesn't work, it installs unrequested and untrusted software, and it never uninstalls properly.

Compared to that, Microsoft looks positively benevolent by comparison.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is an ARM based flash. It's currently running on my nokia n800. Not sure if it's available beyond the web tablet though.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[squiggly12]

Thank you. :)

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[binarylarry]

I don't think its wise to brag about how you're ignorant about Mono/.NET.

That said, it is garbage tech, so you'll probably live. ;)

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing with MS is that Silverlight still has the beta feel about it - new updates, dramatic shifts all the time. It's also the hot new thing - but once you've been using MS stuff for a while, you know the 'hot new thing' is just 'thing du jour' and tomorrow you'll be considered uncool for using it.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[demachina]

Nice shilling for Adobe. Just because Kevin Lynch and some marketing droid put "open" in the name doesn't mean it actually is. Have you tried to actually get source for it. Didn't think so. You can't. That open screen website you pointed to is mostly marketing videos. You probably never will be able to get source for even a majority of the player unless you are a big corporation and sign a scary contract.

Open Screen is mostly marketing BS and vaporware Adobe announced to stave off Silverlight. Congratulations, you fell for marketing BS from a big corporation. Adobe still has a complete stranglehold on the Flash player, unless you are going to try to clone it from the spec. Gnash is making a noble effort but its really hard, a lot of others have tried, no one can achieve full compatibility.

Its nearly a year since Adobe announced OSP, its still not available, and people are still forced to use crap FlashLite on anything not x86. FlashLite has no ActionScript 3 support and is two versions behind the current Flash standard. Adobe can't even put out an up to date player themselves for anything but the x86 desktop platforms.

"Open" aside I'd just be impressed if Adobe could put out Flash players for mobile phones, non x86 netbooks, etc. that don't suck and aren't years out of date. They have never delivered on that write once flash everywhere slogan on anything not x86.

That techcrunch article is a year old and the players its talking about are still not here.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Silverlight supports what users ask it to support

You are not a Microsoft customer. Dell, Gateway, HP, etc are the Microsoft customers, you are a customer of one or more of them. Microsoft makes what its customer want (ie require more, newer, expensive, profitable, .. hardware).

You are not a 'Silverlight user' (in the sense meant by the FAQ). These 'users' are (potentially) the movie studios, broadcasters, sports bodies, .. It is intended that you will be _their_ customers. They get to choose what it supports.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Adobe is proprietary but they have no reason to prefer one platform over another"

You are very mistaken. Adobe is only supporting x86 and ARM with OSP. If you are MIPS or PowerPC you are screwed.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[miguel]

This means that the specifications can now be used to implement third party implementation and can be used by open source efforts to recreate Flash.

In the Silverlight world that was already possible as Microsoft publishes pretty much all of the specs necessary to implement Silverlight.

Both the Flash plugin from Adobe and the Silverlight plugin from Microsoft are proprietary products. Gnash, Sfwdec and Moonlight are open source implementations of these technology.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[miguel]

The current Silverlight 3 preview release supports in addition to the proprietary codecs a pluggable framework for developers that wish to do so to use their own codecs.

As part of the Moonlight effort we now have implemented Vorbis, Theora and ADPCM and have a partial implementation of Dirac almost ready to use.

Our codecs work in both Silverlight 3 and our open source Moonlight implementation.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[symbolset]

Additionally, you make WMV sound like it is the old closed WMV of 10 years ago.

Was there ever a more fertile field to plant patent landmines in than video codecs? I think not. No thanks.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[symbolset]

Java will live on. Perhaps when SCO gets their Arab white knight they'll buy it in the estate sale.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[KingMotley]

I suppose since your extensive group of friends all live in their parents basements, that would explain why they have never used netflix.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[benwaggoner]

Silverlight 2 supports MP3 and WMV files. WMV uses the SMPTE standard VC-1 codec.

Silverlight 3 (in public beta) adds support for MPEG-4 files and the H.264 and AAC-LC codecs. Most MPEG-4 files that play well in both QuickTime and Flash will also play inside Silverlight 3.

And bear in mind that the FLV spec you pointed to is just the file format. There are no public specs for either the VP6 video codec, or the Flash streaming protocols.

There's no such thing as the "Silverlight video format." There is the new Smooth Streaming technology, but the file format there is an ISO MPEG-4 implementation.

As for WHY Silverlight for media, check out:

http://www.smoothhd.com/
http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ in turn.

http://mono-project.com/Moonlight

It's not just Gnash either. Microsoft officially supports it for platforms they don't and they gave them a binary blob to decode proprietary formats.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[gmack]

Didn't RTFA did you? MLB is saying they get better quality picture from flash than they did with Silverlight.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[gmack]

If only Microsoft didn't have a history of suing people who make working products that interoperate with theirs.

Mono is a trojan horse so MS can make licensing revenue after their VFAT patents expire.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bizarre, you're on Slashdot and you don't know what "proprietary" means, from WikiPedia:

Proprietary software is computer software which is the legal property of one party [Adobe]. The terms of use for other parties is defined by contracts or licensing agreements [Terms defined by Adobe]. These terms may include various privileges to share, alter, dissemble, and use the software and its code. [None included, you stick to what Flash gives you, you can only port it to another hardware and that's it]

In the free software movement the term is used for software that may not be used, modified and distributed according to the definitions of free software or for which the source code is not available [Flash source code is not available so it is both "closed and proprietary"]. Although free software usually indeed is legal property of some parties, the license agreements include at least these specific privileges. [Only one party possesses it: Adobe]

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nmg196]

Well if it didn't have the glitches and install issues, Silverlight is actually FAR better than Flash for what they were using it for. Flash is simply awful to program for - it's really designed for simple animations and it's now being used for all sorts of other stuff for which it's not really suited. Silverlight is designed from the ground up to be an interactive front end for powerful web applications, not for making animations. So it wasn't a stupid idea choosing it, it's just a shame that you need admin privilages to install it and it seems to have some technical issues for some users. In a year or so's time when these glitches are ironed out, I'm sure Silverlight will really start to take off.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[nmg196]

PS: "to add insult to injury--proprietary."
- yes, just like Flash which is also totally proprietary.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Lord Lode]

If I can choose between a Flash player that WORKS PERFECTLY and can play ANY movie and game on Newgrounds in Linux, and for which I can design games using Flex 3 in Linux completely FREE, or, an unsupported project lagging behind some official player from Microsoft that will never be useful because people will design Silverlight things for the newest official player, not the lagger-behind, then I know what to choose. Thanks Adobe!

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[cwebb1977]

DRM. The year before Silverlight I could use Firefox and Mediaplayer Connectivity and open the stream in vlc. Which allowed true fullscreen on any monitor. Silverlight only worked in IE, was buggy, and only worked fullscreen on the primary monitor and went out of fullscreen mode once you clicked anywhere on another monitor. At least flash uses any monitor for fullscreen but still returns to window mode when you click somewhere else.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[be0wulfe]

Anyone who's tried to create a real app w/ a Flash interface knows the absolute nightmare it is. It's familiar to users sure, but good Lord it's a pain in the ass to try to develop with.

Silverlight OTOH is far more developer friendly, especially if you're doing anything around .NET

Give it a couple of versions before it catches up to and crushes Flash.

As for the detractors, remember, no v1.0 of ANYTHING was perfect, never is, never will be. But as long as it get's better over time.

Macromedia\Adobe had years to listen to their development community and now they're behind the eight ball.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[jonaskoelker]

the ${LANGUAGE} IDE is a toy

How dare you insssult my preciousss emacsssssss!!

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[master5o1]

and--to add insult to injury--proprietary.

Err... you do know that Flash is proprietary too right?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[oliderid]

I'm currently using the FLASH 10 player on my kde4 opensuse 11 (Firefox).

Anyway Flash or Silverlight as User Interfaces are dead horses. Canvas (to be fairly supported by IE8 and already supported by Firefox 3 and Safari imho) is "maybe" the way to go (MS poor SVG support, the way they did with Java).

There are already some nice experiments in the Mozilla labs heavily based on canvas/JS/CSS. Impressive online app.

You won't need $$$$ IDE, you won't need proprietary format, your content will be easily indexed by search engine, etc.

the only Flash real advantage for the years to come is its impressive video capabilities. I don't see any alternative able to match it in a near future.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Kashgarinn]

Exactly.. and I don't understand why "having to be an admin to install" is all of a sudden a problem, it also exists for flash, if the computer is locked down so you can't install a program without admin rights, then you can't install flash without admin rights.

It's fine by me if silverlight goes down the crapper, I haven't really seen it do anything which I like, plus it has the taint of "flash is something we don't control, we have to only use software we control" which microsoft often thinks.

- but in this case, the reasons given aren't really sufficient to say why they gave up on it. I'm mostly guessing that some CEO didn't get it to work properly, and the IT tech couldn't solve it asap.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

- MS has virtually no control over moonlight, and also seems pretty good about providing the mono team with what they need to replicate both Silverlight and other .NET features

For now. The thing is that we trust Microsoft less than Adobe. A successful Mono would effectively put non Microsoft operating systems under Microsoft control. The OS is now a commodity yet Microsoft could end up controling the userland through .NET/mono. This is what terrified Microsoft so much about Java and why they created their own version*.

* Don't disagree, go and read those internal MSFT emails released during one of many antitrust trials

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Bert64]

Releasing their video codecs still isn't as good as simply using open formats in the first place, because third parties will always be one step behind their newly opened codecs, and future versions may not get opened.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rob Savoye, gnash maintainer, said it was only a PR move and that the docs are useless to a free software project. Also, if you ever used the proprietary player you can never contribute code to a free flash player alternative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoNvsiBTQDE

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[suzerain]

Also, just to put things in perspective, as of last year, there was more video streamed on the Internet using VC1/WMV than any other format. Yes, even eclipsing Flash content on all the YouTube type sites.

Citation please?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[suzerain]

Am I the only one that didn't miss that Flash has for over a year been able to play .H264 natively?

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:H.264

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Skater]

...there is a better way.

Which is? I'm honestly curious.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Don_dumb]

I think they mean that Flash is already installed on those locked down computers but Silverlight isn't. Therefore all those people sitting at their work computers could watch baseball on flash but not on Silverlight and they don't have the rights to install it.
I'm sitting at a very locked down PC and have flash installed, I don't have Silverlight. Although Flash outside of our network is Firewalled - so academic for me.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[jocknerd]

While I'm not a fan of Flash, at least it supports H.264 now. Microsoft, on the other hand, instead of embracing H.264, tried to compete with it. Business as usual.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[marcosdumay]

"I don't understand why "having to be an admin to install" is all of a sudden a problem, it also exists for flash"

At least on Linux, it doesn't exist for Flash.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[bonefry]

> Except right now, it only supports WMV, WMA and MP3

Of course, but that doesn't say much about the actual codecs used. Flash uses FLV, so? Is that less proprietary?

Silverlight 3 has "extensible media support", which means you can use Ogg Vorbis/Theora formats if you'd like. A Mono implementation of Ogg Vorbis is already available for testing.

See here:
http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/getstarted/sl3beta.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1#whatsnew
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-24-1.html

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Hatta]

I think you're missing the point. With linux, when you write support yourself, you can get it included in the kernel (or distros, whatever) and not have to distribute it to everyone yourself.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[tepples]

Actionscript 1 and 2 are crap, but Flash isn't bad at all if you're working on a pure code-based Actionscript 3 project.

It's too bad the Wii's Internet Channel is suck on ActionScript 2.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[orclevegam]

How dare you insssult my preciousss emacsssssss!!

Please, real programmers use butterflies.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel,

After all your hard work you visit /. to read all this crap :(

I really really feel sorry for mankind, linuxkind and internetkind as a whole. People just HAVE the need to be idiots on a daily basis...

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Lord Ender]

Fake IP rights claims aside, you realize this is just entertainment, right? Baseball players and Britney Spears server the same purpose.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Just Some Guy]

And you have come to that conclusion based on exhaustive research of the preferences and use-patterns of all the people who are currently wearing your underwear.

"joocemann" is the CEO of Fruit Of The Loom.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[theillien]

If there is a technologically viable reason...

...DON'T FUCK WITH BASEBALL.

I don't get it.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the OP:

Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces).

As far as reasons go, that one is weak. You need admin privileges to install Flash too.

Also... Flash has tons of security issues. Right now, it seems to be the prefered method for installing viruses and spyware- the hackers just put up a Flash ad which has the exploit in it, loads it onto an ad service, and BAM! Intsant install base.

But he is right that, sadly, Flash is already installed on most machines. And then never updated.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Morkano]

And you have come to that conclusion based on exhaustive research of the preferences and use-patterns of all the people who are currently wearing your underwear.

That list is significantly larger than one might think.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[lethargic8]

Just get the command line flex compiler from adobe, which is completely free and get FlashDevelop 3, which is also free. In other words, Google it.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

>What happened to UDP? What happened to intelligent stream speed switching?

Adobe's server now supports bandwidth adjustment and P2P is in beta.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[jez9999]

2. Silverlight has a much better programing model the Flash. I have not looked at Flex yet but Flash is nasty.

Just to echo some of the comments already on here, AS1 and AS2 are crap; AS3 with Flex is great and can create you a evry nice interface. You tend to put everything inside an 'MXML' file, which is (as the name would suggest) an XML schema. It's *extremely* similar to programming using Javascript and XUL, so Firefox extension devs should be able to just pick this up.

That said, I'd like to know this: where is the OSS alternative to Silverlight/Flash? I frankly don't like the idea of any big company owning rich web media, and though I'd far rather it were Adobe (who have released a Linux version of Flash and Flash Lite which works on mobile devices with open OSes), I'd rather see a proper opensource equivalent. Perhaps we need some kinnd of lightweight version of Java that's designed to work in a similar way to the Flash plugin, loading very quickly, and that has builtin support for video and audio codecs. It's disappointing that there's no real OSS alternative.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[RedK]

A framework, as in "you'll have to distribute your own codec yourself". Unless Microsoft accepts your patches for inclusion in the main distribution... oh wait, Silverlight is not Open Source. And before working on Silverlight 3 features, maybe you should be making sure Moonlight properly catches up to the current Silverlight 2 ?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[DinDaddy]

"a movie on your BluRay player that is even VC-1 encoded as it is the preferred encoding format for many studios. (VC-1 = WMV)"

Got a cite for that? I got one that says the opposite is true at this point:

http://www.blu-raystats.com/NewsLog/2009/01/15/codec-trends-avc-dominates-blu-ray-video-disney-sides-with-dts/

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[AVIDJockey]

Yes please, I second this request for citation. I also want to know if whatever numbers being quoted differentiate between streaming vs. progressive download.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[joocemann]

I suppose since your extensive group of friends all live in their parents basements, that would explain why they have never used netflix.

Please don't make assumptions about my friends based on your own group of friends. The few of my friends that have used netflix got DVDs in the mail... As far as I know a DVD player doesn't require Silverlight.

Your point?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[KingMotley]

You can also stream movies from netflix. They use silverlight as the client for the PC, so I'd say a huge number of people already have it, and it's been pretty well tested.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[TheNetAvenger]

Then why is it not feature complete and never has been?

This is something you should be asking the mono and moonlight teams.

Maybe open source isn't as efficient?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Alex Belits]

That said, I'd like to know this: where is the OSS alternative to Silverlight/Flash?

For video streaming?

1. mplayer
2. xine
3. vlc
4. totem

The idea that you need an interactive environment like Flash for something as trivial as video streaming is the result of one single accident -- that Windows Media Player comes with unusable set of codecs. Adobe merely bundled a set of usable codecs (the codecs that, BTW, everyone but Microsoft already provides) with their stupid scriptable GUI engine, the engine that causes more problems for end-user than it solves. Microsoft, geniuses as they are, instead of fixing their mistake and pushing Windows Media player with good DRM-less codecs as a superior video streaming client (that it actually would be if its default configuration was not total crap -- ex: MPC with any modern codec pack), started pushing another scriptable GUI engine, and lost due to its excessive crappiness.

Think of it -- they lost to Adobe, and not even to one of the better Adobe products but to stupid interactive vector graphics thing, re-purposed as a streaming video client. How pathetic is that?

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[jez9999]

I disagree with the ideas that Flash is "crappy". Its interactivity is what makes it so popular, and a damn sight more useful than just something that can stream video. Streaming video is able to just be part of a far more interactive application. Think chatrooms where each participant can offer a video/audio stream of themselves too. Games where each entry in the top 10 high scores table can have a recorded video message from the person weho got the score. Interactive live broadcasts from a radio DJ... etc. No, I'd like an OSS for that kind of interactivity, and Java is the closest I can see. I'm not sure why it didn't take off as well as Flash, maybe because it's too slow to load? Or the GUI tools (ie. Adobe's "timeline" thingy in CS3/CS4 for non-programmer developers aren't there? To be fair, Java isn't designed to be used like that anyway.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[MyLongNickName]

Or I can ask a group of people who have actually used the tools and get a much better answer than a search engine that is being gamed by dozens of companies trying to get a sale with crippled "free" products. In other words, kiss my ass.

Re:Why make the leap in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

in Flex the experience is the same and even better then SilverLight and the IDE is Eclipse which do not fall from visual studio

That's like saying

[geekoid]

"Major League Baseball Dumps Pact with Demons for Pact with the Devil."

Re:That's like saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is a lot more open than silverlight, it's pretty much the de-facto standard for crappy ads and games on the web, and anyone is able to code for it for free, using open source tools (http://osflash.org/open_source_flash_projects) and without any strings attached (which a microsoft product is guaranteed to have).

Re:That's like saying

[Darkness404]

Um, sure, they are both proprietary, but Flash is much less so. For example, Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't (well, might have an official Mac port, but not Linux), both are 100% compatible with the Windows version, plus Flash has support on some things that Silverlight support will be impossible such as on the Nintendo Wii's Opera browser, and Flash lite for mobile devices. Flash also has a work in progress OSS implementation called Gnash.

Re:That's like saying

[BikeHelmet]

At least the devil is on top.

I'd prefer to be one of the devil's demons, rather than a demon's bitch!

Re:That's like saying

[colinrichardday]

You mean like this?

Damn, where is the picture of Beastie sodomizing Tux?

Re:That's like saying

[Repton]

At least devils are lawful...

Re:That's like saying

[McBeer]

Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't

Wrong.
Mac version: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Linux version: http://mono-project.com/Moonlight

Flash has support on some things that Silverlight support will be impossible such as on the Nintendo Wii's Opera browser

Wrong. The Wii only supports Flash 7. Almost all flash apps check for version 9 or 10 right off the bat so Flash is useless on the Wii.

[Silverlight can't compete with] Flash lite for mobile devices.

Wrong. Silverlight mobile is coming along quite nicely.

Please research things instead of just making a bunch of stuff up and somehow getting +5 informative for it.

Re:That's like saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't

Wrong. [...] Linux version: http://mono-project.com/Moonlight

He said 100% supported. At time of writing Moonlight is already a major version behind the Windows version of Silverlight. It certainly wouldn't let you watch baseball. It took a special effort from Microsoft for it to be able to watch the US presidential inauguration!

Flash has support on some things that Silverlight support will be impossible such as on the Nintendo Wii's Opera browser

Wrong. The Wii only supports Flash 7. Almost all flash apps check for version 9 or 10 right off the bat so Flash is useless on the Wii.

Except that doesn't make the grand-parent's statement wrong.

Silverlight mobile is coming along quite nicely. [silverlight.net]

Well, for starters, that FAQ you linked to loaded so slowly it almost crashed my browser. Then it --very slowly -- drew a pop-in window demanding I install Silverlight. For a FAQ? I don't think so!

Secondly, I see Silverlight is only going to be available for Windows Mobile, which is a tiny piece of the embedded/mobile market. Where's the version for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian etc.?

Please research things instead of just making a bunch of stuff up and somehow getting +5 informative for it.

How about: you learn some manners and stop posting snarky, apologist, the-world-is-Microsoft-only bilge before criticising others? We don't like that sort of behaviour around here.*

* (pre-emptive strike: I must be new here!)

Re:That's like saying

[tobiasly]

Flash also has a work in progress OSS implementation called Gnash.

Holy crap, please tell me that you've ever actually used Gnash or swfdec before claiming that any "work in progress OSS implementation" of Flash is anywhere close to being viable. And Moonlight is officially supported by Microsoft, whereas Adobe doesn't support any open implementation of Flash.

Not trying to be a Microsoft apologist here, just trying to dispel the notion that Flash is more open than Silverlight. They are both closed, proprietary platforms that will hopefully be relegated to near-obsolescence in due time.

Re:That's like saying

[Anonymous Coward]

He said 100% supported. At time of writing Moonlight is already a major version behind the Windows version of Silverlight.

ok so he's 100% wrong about macs and only mostly wrong about linux. Besides it's not Microsoft's fault that you open source commie faggots working on moonlight can't keep up with the real developers working on silverlight.

Wrong. The Wii only supports Flash 7. Almost all flash apps check for version 9 or 10 right off the bat so Flash is useless on the Wii.

Except that doesn't make the grand-parent's statement wrong.

Yes it does. He claimed flash had a benefit that Silverlight doesn't. The fact that neither technology has that feature makes him wrong.

How about: you learn some manners and stop posting snarky, apologist, the-world-is-Microsoft-only bilge before criticising others? We don't like that sort of behaviour around here.

How about: you learn some manners and stop posting snarky, apologist, the-world-revolves-around-my-shitty-OS-nobody-uses-despite-the-fact-its-free bilge before criticizing others? We don't like that sort of behavior around here.

Re:That's like saying

[tobiasly]

Um, sure, they are both proprietary, but Flash is much less so. For example, Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't

And by the way, this statement is laughable. First of all there are no degrees of proprietary. It is or it isn't. Secondly, releasing software on Linux doesn't make it non-proprietary. Oracle runs on Linux, is it "much less proprietary" too?

Re:That's like saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh... The Internet Tough Guy.

You have to be purposefully ignorant if you think that Miguel is an "open source commie faggot". I wish Miguel was an open source commie faggot, instead someone complicit in a patent "protection" racket.

Yours in Jesus,

Open Source Commie Faggot

Yer out!

[nysus]

I'm a proud Microsoft basher. This is good news.

Re:Yer out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, you ignorant sheep. Bash your fucking testes!

This is the MLB.

[Anonymous Coward]

We switched from something that sucks to something that will make your computer bow down before Zod. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Zod

Re:This is the MLB.

[saiha]

I prefer Zodd. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodd

work

[Anonymous Coward]

including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces).

why are people trying to watch MLB on their work computers in the first place?

Re:work

[Anonymous Coward]

Me? Because my work blocks porn.

Re:work

[DiegoBravo]

> including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin

The same happened with to me with an intranet needing flash with machines without internet access. Was a PITA to search for a version of the plugin that doesn't try to auto-update from the web and completely hanging Internet Explorer in its way.

It's a bit ironic, but this is similar to the "can't dump Windows 'cause geek hi-knowledge is needed to install Linux". In both cases the established technology has a silly yet strong advantage.

Re:work

[WindowlessView]

why are people trying to watch MLB on their work computers in the first place?

Have you ever watched or listened to a baseball game? It's been the chosen background noise of America since the 1930s. It's not like a lot happens that is going to disrupt your work.

Re:work

[peragrin]

because I live within 300 miles of the stadium and as such i am in the blackout zone. They figure they can black out all of NY state in both audio and video if your within 300 miles you should go to the game.

I like to stream the audio. Narrow bandwidth even though we have high speed. The audio quality is as good as the radio, and if it is teams that everyone wants to listen to, we use one of the short range FM transmitters to the shop radios.

Radio and tv blackout zones are a true evil. especially in an age when the teams in question make billions.

Re:work

[Anonymous Coward]

right. Boring. I switched to cricket.

MSFT Icon is stale.

[hhr]

This is off topic, but Slashdot's MSFT icon is stale.

The best of both worlds aired 17 years ago. The Borg haven't been on the air in years.

And Bill G is no longer at Microsoft.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[palegray.net]

Mod parent up. While you're at it, have a look at my concept for a new icon that epitomizes the maturity of the Windows family of operating systems.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[kv9]

This is off topic, but Slashdot's MSFT icon is stale.

I agree. I think the new icon should be a flying chair.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[hedwards]

Or a chimp?

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[castorvx]

Since you're being off-topic, I'll make the situation worse and ask a question that has been plaguing me for a while now.

Is referring to companies by their stock symbol some new trend, or do people who frequently do that actually trade stocks a significant amount and have a reason to feel more comfortable with "MSFT" than "Microsoft"?

Is it just shorter?

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[David Gerard]

We need punctuation in NASDAQ symbols just so we can call them M$ for real.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[bcat24]

Most (all?) of Slashdot's icons are stale. That's part of its charm.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[artor3]

It's an unambiguous acronym that is commonly mentioned in news articles in the form of "Microsoft (MSFT) announced today...". When you read it often enough, it can stick, though companies with short names like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) don't get abbreviated.

Even shorter acronyms are of course possible (e.g. MS), but the mere fact they exist doesn't mean people will always use them (think US vs USA... both in common use, neither is really better than the other).

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[DragonWriter]

And Bill G is no longer at Microsoft.

Funny, no one seems to have told Microsoft, who still seem to think that William H. Gates III is their Chairman.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a new trend to look cool like your some sort of stock trading genius dude. (when in fact almost everyone who uses it is NOT).

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[ianare]

I don't know but it irritates the hell outta me ... this is supposed to be a tech forum : Wall St. douche bags fuck off !

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[nschubach]

A chimp on a flying chair.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[spitzak]

This is because a bunch of astroturfers convinced everybody here that calling them "M$" was "childish" (apparently they are extremely hurt and insulted that somebody associated their beloved company with money, which it obviously has nothing to do with!).

Since "MS" means Multiple Sclerosis, Mississippi, Manuscript, Mrs/Miss, and a lot of other things, and and "MicroSoft" is too long, a lot of people started using "MSFT".

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[Anonymous Coward]

M$! From my parent's basement, I stab at thee!

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[palegray.net]

I guess today's mods don't like ponies. I thought everyone liked ponies. I guess I'll try to love Microsoft now.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[blind biker]

Yeah, times have truly changed. This new Microsoft has started losing some battles. IE marketshare is slipping, netbooks have opened the ground for a non-irrelevant number of Linux computers and MS didn't manage to "f*cking kill" Google. MSN is still a joke, the brown thing (zune) was a disaster, MS didn't manage to shove down the consumer's throat their new OS (this is the greatest sign of MS' weakening) and even the Xbox business isn't a resounding success, in spite of the money burnt and the number of consoles sold (perhaps the fact that the 360 carves a groove in your DVDs has had some adverse effects on sales?).

All in all, this is not anymore the invincible monster we all have to bow in front of - the king's naked and he's tossing chairs through the Windows.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're all wrong. The correct answer is a flying cube.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[spitzak]

Thanks for proving exactly what I am saying.

A desperate attempt to associate "M$" with "childish". I notice nobody ever gets all defensive if somebody says "MicroSuck" or something that *really* is childish. But "M$" and you panic!

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymously for obvious reasons of staying of ppl's freak list.

When I was contracted to Microsoft my contracting employer provided a cheat sheet with the basics on how to survive at Microsoft. One item was that Microsoft employees almost always refer to their company name using MSFT (stock symbol). It's ingrained in their corporate culture. Having worked there I can assume it is that way due to their drive and constant "pressure cooker" reminders that it's all about money and power. Constantly referring to their stock symbol is yet another reminder of this foundation principle.

A little off topic but their mid-manager culture is very cut throat (at least in the marketing and sales area). There is very little collaboration and managers will do whatever they can to get that next promotion including undermining their colleagues. Pretty much everyone there are Type A personalities. People rarely stay in the same job role for longer than a year. If you're doing a good job they move you to a new area, if you're doing a bad job they move you to a new area (although enough bad ones and you're outta there), so consistency is totally lacking. Not surprising I saw some managers burn out from this type of work.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[Anonymous Coward]

But Linsux and open sores are, of course, terrible insults. Right?

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[spitzak]

Wow, amazing reading comprehension! Let me quote the post you replied to:

"if somebody says "MicroSuck" or something that *really* is childish"

I pretty clearly said "microsuck" is a childish, so yes "Linsux" is childish as well. I think quoting swear words is pretty childish.

"open sores" is a valid term if you are talking about quality or standardization or "viral" license problems, or some other undesirable and damaging and growing side-effect on things other than OSS, because the term "sores" would be relevant. As it is longer than OSS you cannot use it as an abbreviation though.

A better question is whether calling OSS "O$$" is an insult. I don't think so. In fact I think that would be a good way to indicate a company using OSS for money-making, either as a positive thing or as a negative (such as "fake" O$$ where they really are not doing anything that is Open Source but just using the terms for good will).

Replying instantly claiming something is "childish" is a good indication that you subconsciously don't think so. If something really is childish then there is no need to point it out. Thus the instant response to "M$", but lack of response to "MicroSuck" or "Linsux" and so on indicate that there is a big difference.

Re:MSFT Icon is stale.

[shutdown -p now]

I wouldn't be able to say about that in general, but for Microsoft specifically referring to it as MSFT is not bothersome because employees tend to. If you hang out at Microsoft public newsgroups, for example, some of those are frequented by developers and support, and when they reply in their official capacity, their name is suffixed with "[MSFT]".

Don't worry!

[Un pobre guey]

Have no fear, the Microsoft fanboys will soon tell us the many, many reasons why this is actually a good thing and how, Real Soon Now, Microsoft will fix it and add dozens of fabulous new features that make Adobe software a thing of the past. The Mono fanboys will do much the same, although nobody will understand why.

Re:Don't worry!

[digitalunity]

As someone who is currently writing a medium scale .NET application and intending on releasing it as GPL, I'd really rather compile against Mono but they aren't 3.5 compatible.

In addition to that, it seemed to me the integration with Visual Studio IDE wasn't that good. Hate to say it, but the Visual Studio IDE is pretty much bomb compared to a lot of the open source stuff I've used in the past, including Eclipse.

Re:Don't worry!

[ckaminski]

Very true with VC++ 7.0. I haven't used the later incarnations, so I'm not sure how much of it has been converted to .Net. If they've changed it in any way like they did SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Manager, I'll keep Eclipse thank you.

The wizards and ancillary tools, however, are the bomb.

Re:Don't worry!

[digitalunity]

Personally, I used SQL Server Management Studio 2005 Express(the free edition) and wasn't really impressed. I had a hard time distinguishing it's features from PostgreSQL, with the exception that stored procedures interface in MSSQL is better.

It works I suppose. I wouldn't use it anything that really matters though, I would still use PostgreSQL on principle, familiarity and portability reasons.

I use Visual Studio 2008 Professional and it is tremendous. I haven't used Visual Studio in a few years and it's gotten even better. The project management and build integration tools are great.

As a old timer Win32 programmer, finally having an application framework from Microsoft that comes even a smidgin close to QT's API sanity has been nice. I tried programming in MFC in the past and that alone converted me to Linux for a few years!

It's been a few months since I programmed anything in C++, and even then it was on a GNU toolchain. I haven't done any VC++ since VB is just so much easier for GUI intensive applications, so I can't say if the C++ bindings are as consistent and easy to use.

Re:Don't worry!

[digitalunity]

I hate to follow up my own reply, but just as an aside...

this seems a perfect place to say Microsoft is insane for not reimplementing rich text boxes in .NET Forms from scratch. Their insistence on using native Win32 text boxes is fucking nuts and makes subclassing the RichTextBox class a stupid stupid nightmare.

Re:Don't worry!

[dudpixel]

Visual Studio is great for .NET but not so great for anything else. Its like a car that no matter what you do it always ends up at the same destination.

If you dont want to use MFC or .NET, then there are much better IDE's out there than VS.

Sliverlight was an idiotic decision anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly all front end developers know javascript, and are therefore quite capable of flash programming. Silverlight has low market penetration and nobody wants to use it because it's widely seen as the latest in a long series of failed attempts to Microsoftize the web.

Re:Sliverlight was an idiotic decision anyway

[Omniscientist]

Agreed.

I tend to view Silverlight as the black sheep of the family of WPF UI-programming technologies; an approach that is useful for desktop application development, but an utterly inappropriate choice for web content.

Re:Sliverlight was an idiotic decision anyway

[biovoid]

ActionScript 3 is much closer to Java than JavaScript these days. Class-based (not prototype-based) OOP, strict typing, etc.

Re:Sliverlight was an idiotic decision anyway

[schnablebg]

Lots of developers already know the .NET Framework and are learning WPF. Lots of companies already have backend systems in .NET, subscribe to MSDN, and are investing in training their teams in WPF.

This is the reason that Silverlight is an appealing choice to lots of people and worthy of investigation in Microsoft shops (there are lots of them, and they aren't all evil).

Flex on Rails! (but not on Steroids)

[Bushido Hacks]

I'd like to see what the website would look like using Adobe Flex and Ruby on Rails.

Re:Flex on Rails! (but not on Steroids)

[David Gerard]

First read as "I'd like to see what the Rapture would look like using Adobe Flex and Ruby on Rails."

If you've been bad, you get to use Silverlight, XPS and HD Photo for everything for all eternity!

Re:Flex on Rails! (but not on Steroids)

[Thantik]

What would we call it? Flails? Fails? Frails?

if it aint broke

[Vorpix]

i used mlb.tv last year and subscribed again this year (go phils!). they've made a lot of improvements to the flash player this year, with a slider (almost like a volume control) to increase picture quality/bandwidth usage, and new abilities to jump to specific innings of prerecorded games.

these features look and work great. plus flash has way more penetration on the desktop than silverlight. i really don't see many compelling reasons (unless microsoft is throwing a lot of money their way) to rush into silverlight.

Re:if it aint broke

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but I don't LIKE being penetrated by Flash!
If Flash and Silverlight have an epic boss in-fight, we can at least damage Flash a little and try to crack their monopoly and stick a more open and free penis metaphor in there.

Flash is only installed on 97% of machines

[caffeinejolt]

This chart shows that the Flash install base is not as high as some (i.e. Adobe) claim

Re:Flash is only installed on 97% of machines

[mrblondetm]

This was covered in a previous Slashdot article. Of course Adobe is going to round up in this case and I am sure MLB is only quoting Adobe.

Yow!

[Un pobre guey]

That image is almost NSFW!

Re:Yow!

[eh2o]

Quick, quaff a unicorn chaser!

Better the Devil You Know

[weston]

... as they say.

As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Phase Shifter]

>

As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.

...For small values of "works."

Anyone else having problems with "You muct have flash 9 or greater" messages using the non-IE version of the flash plugin?

If I still have to use Microsoft's browser to get Flash to work, then it's no better than Silverlight.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'd rate flash more evil than you let on, just because it's just too inefficient. I wouldn't want a page with a flash element be idle for long on battery power, as Flash seems to want 5% of processing power whenever it's running.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[ianare]

No, I haven't seen that, but sometimes I get a similar message when using flash 10. In any case I would say that it's the web developer's fault, since it's quite obvious Flash does work on other platforms.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[nschubach]

I have Flash 10 plugin installed on both my 64-bit Debian Iceweasel(Firefox) and on my 32-bit Firefox 3 browser on my Windows XP box at work. I have never received that message... except when I first needed to install it.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running the Flash Player uninstaller and then doing a fresh install of the latest version. I once encountered an issue where Flash Player upgraded incorrectly and started reporting bad version information. A clean installation fixed it.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[martinX]

Nope. I use Flash 10 with Firefox on a PC running XP, and Flash 10 with Safari and Firefox on a Mac running 10.5.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[stars_are_number_1]

I got that message a couple days ago. What happened was Flash did an automatic update as my computer was starting up. I had Firefox open at the time, so I had to close it to complete the update. I did and launched Firefox again, only to find that it didn't update successfully. So, I had to download it again, this time manually, and install the software. Then I went ahead and rebooted the computer for good measure. Everything's been fine since then.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Phase Shifter]

Problem is, I've tried updating 5-6 times since Flash 10 came out--and the firefox version still doesn't work. (and I don't think the installer even detects Chrome, so I'm stuck using IE about 40% of the time someone uses flash on their website)

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[ianare]

I use version 10 64bit that is packaged by Ubuntu ... It's been a while since I get any messages, but when v10 was new, there were a lot of sites that complained about it. Now they seem fixed.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Phase Shifter]

Try running the Flash Player uninstaller and then doing a fresh install of the latest version. I once encountered an issue where Flash Player upgraded incorrectly and started reporting bad version information. A clean installation fixed it.

Tried this, and it made no difference whatsoever.

Ironically, I never had any troubles with flash in firefox before they supposedly "fixed" it.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[tobiasly]

... as they say.

As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.

It's a proprietary format entirely controlled by one company that has reached ubiquitous status by being the only viable solution for several problems for far too long. And as for being proven, you've obviously never tried to watch Flash videos on 64-bit Linux. Only now do they have an alpha version of a native x86_64 player and it's been in alpha since late last year. How terrible can their code possibly be if it takes this long to recompile it for 64 bits?

You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[symbolset]

I have seen it. Don't install Adobe's flash if you can avoid it. It bites. I did get it right this weekend for grandma on Ubuntu by installing the Ubuntu restricted extras, which includes flash and a bunch of other stuff. If you want to play the encrypted DVDs you'll need the decss package as well. Google around and you'll find it. YMMV. Offer void in some locales.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[KingMotley]

Yup, I've had that same problem, and I've fixed other peoples computers with the same issue. Adobe knows about the problem, and they have for a while, they just haven't fixed it apparently. You can find messages about it dating all the way back to flash 7.

Look in your registry for the keys that begin with:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash

There should be 8 or 9 of them, go through each one of them, and give the Everyone user full rights to them. Then re-install flash 10, and the problem will go away.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[pimpimpim]

I have the Flash 10 player on my pre-installed dell ubuntu. That said, updating flash is a pain in the ass. On my Suse work pc it was working fine until it got automatically updated together with some video codecs. Since then I have it end up as a white square every now and then, leaving stuck npviewer.bin processes behind.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else having problems with "You muct have flash 9 or greater" messages using the non-IE version of the flash plugin?

No. It's just you.

trying turning off noscript for flash. I know that youtube needs both youtubr.com and yimg.com(?) unblocked to show a clip.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[marcosdumay]

I got that message once, because I was using Konqueror (I had flash installed, the same version it requested). The site just made the old test "is it IE? is it Firefox? No I don't support it". It worked on Iceweasel, but I used it just for testing, since I don't want to use a stupidly coded site.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else having problems with "You muct have flash 9 or greater" messages using the non-IE version of the flash plugin?

Nope. Only you.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Phase Shifter]

The problem isn't just that the site works in IE but not Firefox. The site also worked in Firefox with the Flash 9 plugin, but not the Flash 10 plugin.

If it were a poorly coded site only checking for IE then flash wouldn't have worked before the upgrade. Therefore, it must be the new plugin that's defective.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using mlb.tv extensively from firefox and opera without any issues. no reliance on MS browsers at all

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[weston]

It's a proprietary format entirely controlled by one company

It's also well-documented and has third-party and even open source tools for content creation, as well as an open source project or two aiming at playing.

has reached ubiquitous status by being the only viable solution for several problems for far too long.

Yep. That's the niche part.

And as for being proven, you've obviously never tried to watch Flash videos on 64-bit Linux.

Perhaps I should say "proven around 99% of desktop environments in use." If they haven't put resources into 64-bit Linux yet, that's certainly frustrating, but one can hardly blame them for failing to put their full punch behind what's probably not even half of the entire Linux market yet.

Only now do they have an alpha version of a native x86_64 player and it's been in alpha since late last year. How terrible can their code possibly be if it takes this long to recompile it for 64 bits?

They are far from the only piece of software that has trouble making the 64 bit jump. This last weekend I tried building Google's v8 engine on 64 bit BSD and Linux machines before discovering that it's pretty much hopeless for the near term, and this is a piece of "next generation" work that's largely been conceived and built in the last few years.

You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.

I'm not apologizing for anything (although I might point again that as frustrating as it may be to 64 bit Linux users, Adobe's failure to penetrate that particular segment of the market is a mighty weak metric of how cross-platform they are). I'm pointing out that Flash has been readily filling a niche which hasn't been otherwise filled effectively for the last 10 years. This fact and my pointing it out has certainly done far, far less to hold up progress on the web than some of the w3c's navel-gazing. When the open technologies mature enough to compete across a wide segment, I'll be using them and singing their praises. And even until then, if I can get a job done with them with a few hacks and some extra sweat, I'll probably do it. Doesn't mean Flash isn't the right tool sometimes in the meanwhile.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[Anonymous Coward]

That issue was caused by plugin wrappers that tested if the first digit in the version string was >= the required version for the site. That method worked reliably until version 10 was out.

Re:Better the Devil You Know

[jez9999]

You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.

Look, I'd like to see an OSS alternative to Flash, but I just don't think HTML5 and AJAX is it. There are things Flash/Silverlight can do that AJAX either can't or would be crap at doing, and you're in cloud-cuckoo land if you think anything else. See, Flash (and obviously Silverlight) were designed from scratch for vector graphics animations, interaction with the mouse, etc. and for those graphics to look good and not flicker or stuff. AJAX wasn't, really. Could you create hedgehog launch with AJAX and HTML5? Possibly a crappier, flickery, nasty version of it, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Yeah, I know it's a tacky little game, but this is Flash's bread and butter. It does this stuff really well. AJAX won't, and IMHO, never will. Give it up.

Flash UI sucks rotten eggs.

[b4dc0d3r]

Until they have a "Do not ask me again" checkbox directly on the "This site wants to store data" dialog I will continue to leave flash disabled.

I don't want every site able to store data, but some sites will not play anything that way, because they store data files locally instead of using the browser cache. I can steal youtube videos directly out of the cache, but I can't get crap out of these sties that store things using flash storage unless I allow sites to store.

Well, I have no way of knowing which sites are just broken in Firefox, or require Flash storage, so I leave the "ask me" button on.

Colbert Report and Daily Show will not play unless I allow storing locally - it took me 6 months of near-apathy to figure that one out. So I allowed sites to ask me. Adjusting the volume on youtube will get you 10 "This site is storing data, allow?" queries. If I just said no, what are the chances I'll change my mind? Ask me once, that's it.

To set the 'Don't ask me again" you have to go in to the Flash options, and it's fairly simple that way. Yes, I get it. But the default behavior is to ask you repeatedly to store up to 10k of data, with no way of saying "quit asking". This is not good design.

There are other problems, but I've spent this much describing this problem, do you really want to hear more? Probably not. They don't seem to think it's a valid bug report, so instead I'll just disparage them publicly.

Re:Flash UI sucks rotten eggs.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623

Tag: goodriddance

[PingXao]

That's part of it. The other part is how I guess I'm in the 1% who does not have Flashy installed. On my machines I've said "good riddance" to that, too. Except for one, but on that one I use FlashBlock and I probably actually click through maybe 1 out of 500 flashy thingies to let them play.

Re:Tag: goodriddance

[Anonymous Coward]

flash works well for internet video. welcome to 2009.

has anyone seen high quality flv?

[dingDaShan]

MLB could benefit from the high resolution available. Has anyone watched the March Madness on Demand from Cbs.sportsline.com? The quality was amazing... much better than any flash video that I have watched. It seems that Flash is way behind in terms of video. Youtube is NOT good quality. Cbs.sportsline.com's video scaled down or up based on the available bandwidth and was an excellent viewing experience. Of course, I am not factoring in the business aspects, but the quality of silverlight's video can be high. further reading http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/61563

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[tpgp]

has anyone seen high quality flv?

Try here. Up to 1080p.

Youtube is NOT good quality.

Depends on the quality of the original video - youtube allows up to 720p - look for a 'HD' button in the bottom right corner of the vid.

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree the video on March Madness on Demand was very, very good. Much better than any Flash video that I have seen. I was very impressed.

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[Dwedit]

Flash Player may support HD video, but it can't play it back in full screen mode (1680x1050) in realtime without dropping frames, even on a Core 2 Duo.
Take the same .MP4 file, and play it in something like VLC or FFDShow, and it plays beautifully.
Flash fails as a video player.

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[KlomDark]

A Core 2 Duo ain't all that impressive, youngster...

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[Sir_Lewk]

It should be plenty fine to play a fucking video.

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[mariushm]

It plays just fine if you have a good video card.

Another very exciting new feature in Flash Player 9 Update 3 is hardware scaling support for Flash Playerâ"which lends itself perfectly to enhancing the video playback experience of HD video in full screenâ"especially when you consider the size of HD 1080p video (1920 x 1080). The new hardware acceleration was not built solely for the new H.264 video capabilities. It also helps with larger On2 VP6 video files and the display of SWF content in general.

The lazy developers just need to use it well.
Youtube has to think at the lots of Flash versions and the video quality of the videos they show sucks anyway.
Just try Vimeo any time of the day with a HD movie.
I've watched 720p content there with no problems on an old D805 processor.

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[DeathCarrot]

A Core 2 Duo ain't all that impressive, youngster...

I don't think your average YouTuber is the kind to upgrade their CPU every time a faster one comes out. Hell, I can run Crysis fine on my Conroe from 3 years ago, why not YouTube?

Re:has anyone seen high quality flv?

[agola]

I think you have to take the context into account here. When all it's assigned to do is display one high-res video stream from disk without dropping frames, a core 2 duo isn't just impressive, it's ridiculously overpowered.

I took his point to be not bragging about his hardware in general, but illustrating that the problem in this case is the software, not that he's trying to run modern programs on an ancient machine that isn't really built for it.

Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody cares

[David Gerard]

Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.

"We have a fabulous selection of content partners for Silverlight," announced Microsoft marketer Scott Guthrie on his blog today. "NBC for the Olympics, which delivered millions of new users to BitTorrent. The Democrat National Committee, which is fine because those Linux users are all Ron Paul weirdos anyway. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. My options are underwater, my resume's a car crash, Google won't call me back. My life is an exercise in futility. I'm the walking dead, man. The walking dead."

Silverlight was created by Microsoft to leverage its desktop monopoly on Windows, to work off the tremendous sales and popularity of Vista. Flash is present on a pathetic 96% of all computers connected to the Internet, whereas Silverlight downloads are into the triple figures.

"But it's got DRM!" cried Guthrie. "Netflix loved it! And web developers love us too, after all we did for them with IE 6. Wait, come back! We'll put porn on it! Free porn!"

Similar Microsoft initiatives include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF, its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs and its earlier Liquid Motion attempt to replace Flash. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.

In a Microsoft internal security sweep, Guthrie's own desktop was found to still be running Windows XP.

Ballmer should have bought Adobe

[Anonymous Coward]

... long time ago.

HTML 5?

[RonGHolmes]

I'm still surprised companies aren't jumping on the HTML 5 bandwagon. Eschew flash and plug-ins for native web browser applications and video. http://280slides.com/ is a great example of what can be done. The ObjectiveJ they're developing is truly amazing - and it's all browser native. Even IE 8 works. I hate to say it, but Apple are right for once - get rid of flash and other plug-in based user interfaces and get back to basics. Share your JavaScript frameworks, use local storage and more - embrace HTML 5.

Re:HTML 5?

[hedwards]

I'd love that, but at this point a significant portion of the public is using a browser that doesn't support those technologies. As a FreeBSD user I'd be more than happy to be rid of flash altogether.

But on the other hand, the fact that I didn't have flash set up at all spared me from all the annoying browser crashes and freeze ups that inevitably follow.

Re:HTML 5?

[blackest_k]

If you take a look at the demo theres the lovely statement save your presentation as Powerpoint 2007 an ISO Standard.
sounds really open

Re:HTML 5?

[Locke2005]

The whole point of using flash for video is to 1) prevent viewers from skipping over ads, and 2) prevent viewers from saving the streaming video to disk. If you allow native web browser applications, then what is to prevent users from substituting their own native application which violates points 1 and 2?

Re:HTML 5?

[RonGHolmes]

I suppose, but then people can get the streams anyway. Flash just encapsulates the video stream. It's easy enough to get it. Javascript can obfuscate the source of data too if you have the right frameworks. Javascript really can do everything flash can, including loading compiled bytecode.

Re:HTML 5?

[RonGHolmes]

I'd prefer it if Keynote was an ISO standard - although in some ways it is - the data is stored in XML. Keynote is sooo much nicer to present with. I wish there was a Windows version.

Re:HTML 5?

[artor3]

Yes, you can save in PowerPoint 2007's format. Or in the old-style PowerPoint format. Or in ODF format. Or as a PDF.

What exactly are you complaining about?

Re:HTML 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you not heard of the "Flash Video Resources Downloader" for Firefox? So much for #2. :)

Re:HTML 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

So your argument for supporting Flash is the same as Sony's argument for supporting DRM and Rootkits... terrific. You just made the GPP's point much easier to understand. Thanks.

Re:HTML 5?

[Grishnakh]

Nothing, just like there's nothing to prevent people from doing those same things in Flash. People have already written programs to allow users to save streaming video to disk.

Most people aren't going to know how to do these things with HTML5, just like most people don't know how to do them with Flash.

Re:HTML 5?

[Locke2005]

My argument was that flash provides no value to the consumer of video. But professional video producers wont make their videos available on the web unless they believe that they wont be "pirated", and unless they derive some revenue from making them available. I sorta like being able to watch TV shows and movies on the 'net with fewer commercials than broadcast TV. But if I could easily get at those video streams without the commercials, I would.

Re:HTML 5?

[blackest_k]

you must be new here, or have a short memory

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/03/31/0039238.shtml
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/03/31/200201.shtml
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/04/20/2112208.shtml
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/05/02/0049225.shtml

http://www.itpro.co.uk/605142/ms-ooxml-a-format-without-a-future
http://www.itpro.co.uk/605496/iso-rejects-anti-microsoft-office-open-standards-appeal

"The International Standards Organisation has rejected appeals from four countries to deny Microsoft's Office Open XML backing as an international standard.

OOXML won approval from the ISO in April, following a controversial fast-track review process which was plagued with claims of voting irregularities, and accusations of technical flaws in the standard itself."

page 2 of the last link is a hoot as well http://www.itpro.co.uk/605142/ms-ooxml-a-format-without-a-future/2

"ISO ratification was achieved at considerable cost. The reputation of the ISO was compromised, as was that of Microsoft. ISO ratification was achieved amid widespread allegations of misbehaviour and undue political influence, which was noted by the likes of the European Commission. Neelie Kroes, the EU Commissioner, recently said: "If voting in the standard-setting context is influenced less by the technical merits of the technology but rather by side agreements, inducements, package deals, reciprocal agreements, or commercial pressure ... then these risk falling foul of the competition rules."

The process has also adversely affected the work of the ISO. Martin Bryan, a senior ISO/IEC Convenor, who reported that the fast-tracking of OOXML "has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 (OOXML) as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots."

"More than one commentator was reminded of the famous remark by Tom Lehrer, mathematics lecturer and sixties satirist, who said that "satire became obsolete the day that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.""

Do I need say any more

Re:HTML 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well flash doesn't exactly make that impossible. A little googling and you can rip any flash video from any site...

Re:HTML 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not HTML 5. Look at the DOCTYPE.

Re:HTML 5?

[ignavus]

embrace HTML 5.

This is the only HTML I'll embrace:

<object type="girl">

Re:HTML 5?

[heffrey]

IE6? No, I didn't think so.

Re:HTML 5?

[yuna49]

If you watched any of the NCAA Basketball Tourney in Silverlight, you'll have observed that the interface was specifically designed to block you from switching to another game when the ads were shown. It's as if your cable set-top box could disable the channel tuner and remote during commercials.

Earlier someone posted that he knew of no one who used Silverlight. I'll bet he doesn't know anyone who's a college basketball fan. Millions of us had to install Silverlight to enable us to watch out-of-market games, and no, Moonlight was not an option. It only supports version 1 of the Silverlight standard; the games were shown using Version 2. I ended up installing a Win7 build in a VirtualBox VM on Ubuntu just for this purpose.

I'm curious why Microsoft feels the need to port things like Silverlight to the Apple platform but apparently feels no such need to port to Linux. Market share certainly plays a role, but it makes me wonder which platform MS considers the greater long-term threat to their monopoly?

I haven't really looked into Canvas or other native browser approaches. Do they enable encryption and other DRM features that many content providers consider a minimum requirement?

Re:HTML 5?

[poot_rootbeer]

The whole point of using flash for video is to 1) prevent viewers from skipping over ads, and 2) prevent viewers from saving the streaming video to disk.

3) provide a common cross-platform experience for all visitors
4) prevent users from having to deal with "codec hell"

Re:HTML 5?

[yuna49]

Most people aren't going to know how to do these things with HTML5, just like most people don't know how to do them with Flash.

Right-click, "Save Video As..." perhaps?

Re:HTML 5?

[Hatta]

If my favorite past time chose to make it that difficult for me to pass the time, I'd just find another way. If they are that contemptuous of you, why support them with continued viewing? There are plenty of other things to do that do not require the jumping through of hoops and are just as enjoyable.

Re:HTML 5?

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, no. Any place like that is going to put in some JavaScript code to disable that, just like many places won't let you save images by blocking it with JavaScript.

Of course, this doesn't work with Firefox or if you disable the Javascript, but again, most people use IE and have no clue how to get around such things.

Re:HTML 5?

[Xoltri]

You can easily save streaming video to disk. There are many ways to do it, just google it.

Re:HTML 5?

[Locke2005]

Thanks, I hadn't heard of it. It isn't a universal solution; they provide a list of sites that they currently work with. 95% of them appear to be porn sites -- as if there was a shortage of downloadable porn trailers on the 'net!

Re:HTML 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

pwned

Re:HTML 5?

[jez9999]

That's because the sites you're visiting are doing nothing more that having their Flash applet download a file, probably via HTTP. A FLV file. Look up Flash Media Server, or Wowza, or Red5, for RTMP-based Flash streaming audio/video, and you'll have a MUCH harder time ripping content.

The Silverlight player was hideous

[tcopeland]

I cancelled my subscription last year because the player interaction/interface/experience/whatever was just dreadful. Heading over there now to sign up for this year, go Yankees!

Re:The Silverlight player was hideous

[owlnation]

go Yankees!

Mod parent insightful!

Re:The Silverlight player was hideous

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod both of you losers, just like the Yankees last night!

Re:The Silverlight player was hideous

[geekoid]

Go Yankees...go to the center of the sun.

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[Killer Orca]

"Wait, come back! We'll put porn on it! Free porn!"

Well I'm sold.

Actionscript

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because C# is far superior to ActionScript?

Re:Actionscript

[acidrainx]

In what way?

Re:Actionscript

[KlomDark]

Um, pretty much all? ActionScript is for newbs.

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - looking at the stat owl site mentioned above, silverlight is nowhere near flash in overall usage. Not sure why they insist on trying to get into this market other then that it is Microsoft!

Dumb Exec's

[EEPROMS]

This is a typical case of top down management with flashy MBA's looking at BS numbers from large entities with conflicting interests (sound familiar, if not then look-up Arthur Anderson or Enron, conflict of interest, on Google). I can bet some IT company that is a Microsoft partner fed the MLB board some lame numbers showing that Microsoft is on everyones desktop thus Silverlight will be a no brainer. The fact the Microsoft technology is immature and the competition (Adobe flash) is extremely mature with lots of supporting web applications/mind-share is totally ignored or forgotten.

Re:Dumb Exec's

[Fluffeh]

is totally ignored or forgotten.

Please do not confuse ignored and forgotten with omitted and brushed over.

Facts that are beneficial to a case are highlighted and put on pedestals.
Facts that are unimportant to a case are ignored and forgotten.
Facts that are detrimental, highlight problems or disprove what you are saying are omitted and avoided.

Got nothing to do with being dumb on the exec's part. It's more on not asking the right people to investigate the technical or user aspects.

Re:Dumb Exec's

[yuna49]

MLB executives' number-one concern is protection of their intellectual property. Whichever vendor promised MLB better security for their content probably won out. The NCAA probably takes the same point of view as does The Masters.

Sports leagues worry about a number of things when expanded distribution of their contests is proposed. One is the protection of home team revenues against competition from televised out-of-market games. Leagues are also concerned about rights fees from the resale of live materials for use as highlights or in sports documentary productions. Unlike my hypothetical executives, I don't think making material available in Flash really threatens the League's ability to collect hundreds of times over for Carleton Fisk's home run or Tiger's ball teetering then falling into the cup at the Masters. Most of the revenues shots like these generate come from entities that use these materials under license and pay rights fees. Sharing on YouTube won't affect much of that at all, I'd wager. Perhaps those executives now feel the same way.

Distributors like CBS share their concerns but have a more pertinent issue of their own -- how well these proposed platforms enhance advertising sales. Look at this year's NCAA "netcasts" by CBS. In the past you'd see just a few inserted ads from a couple of companies like Marriott. This year we saw the full panoply of advertising. To me, it looked like we were being shown the ads on the remote game's telecast just as they were shown to viewers in the coverage region. And as I said elsewhere, the Silverlight application prohibited switching between games during commercials. So I'm guessing that CBS negotiated with its national advertisers for the additional revenues generated by the online exposures and might have even collected a premium from its use of the technology.

Not being available in offices was probably another big strike against Silverlight. It's an open secret that the sports leagues and telecasters have a substantial audience of office workers. If use of Silverlight restricts viewing of events in offices, that alone might have been a compelling reason to switch to Flash. Maybe it's no coincidence that this announcement came just after the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament and just before Opening Day and The Masters.

Any MLB users want to tell us about how advertising is handled on the new Flash platform?

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[David Gerard]

I'm honestly surprised they haven't quietly sponsored a porn site to offer free porn but only if you install Silverlight. It's the only way they'll get an installation base.

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[David Gerard]

I'd like to see them answer the question a commenter asked of where that graph comes from.

This is a good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Desktop Linux user, I fear the adoption of Silverlight. The reason is, while the framework for Silverlight is FOSS, the Codecs aren't. Microsoft could wait until Silverlight got popular, and then yank the chair out from under us by breaking Codec compatibility/licensing.

MLB not particularly professional

[notaprguy]

It's pretty low class of MLB to slam Silverlight. Flash and Silverlight both have strengths. Flash's biggest strengths are ubiquity and a fairly large number of "developers" who know how to use it. Flash's weaknesses is that it's a hariball with no real programming model. Silverlight's strengths is that it's a real platform - an extension of .NET - with good and improving tooling support and huge numbers of potential developers who know .NET. Silverlight's weaknesses are tjat it is not yet on as many machines as Flash (but it will eventually...Microsoft won't give up) and that it's just more immature. For MLB to throw around innuendo about the performance or reliability of Silverlight is low class and obviously not credible given how well Silverlight worked for the Olympics, NCAA's and in many other places. If I were Adobe I'd be worried. Flash will lead for a while longer but Silverlight is fundamentally better as a platform and Microsoft won't give up.

Re:MLB not particularly professional

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flash's weaknesses is that it's a hariball with no real programming model."

Bull. But hey, don't let facts ruin your perfectly good rant.

ActionScript 1 and 2 were messy, no argument there.
But ActionScript 3, which has been around for 2 versions of Flash now, is exceptionally clean.

It is a modern object oriented language. In fact, it's implementation of E4X (XML manipulation) is by far may favorite way of working with XML in ANY language.

Re:MLB not particularly professional

[sjames]

Anyone with enough IQ to read in the first place can guess that they prefer flash to silverlight since they're switching. What would you have them say? "Silverlight is the best thing ever so we're dumping it"?

Re:MLB not particularly professional

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, how do these zombies get to post? Really, it's like he is not even afraid to hide the fact he is an astro tourfer I am disgusted.

Yes, but there are downsides

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow downloads, jittery playback compared to Windows Media Player, switching between in-browser and full screen takes long and makes you watch pieces twice, full screen fps is jarringly low, and even with all this, the video quality still isn't quite as good as the Xvid video I just torrented.

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[Anonymous Coward]

They did. Playboy released its old editions on the web, but only if you use silverlight. But I really need they need something more hardcore. ;-)

The new MLB experience is worse

[Anonymous Coward]

MLB subscribers are outraged with the new experience. The NextDef plug-in used in combination with Flash is causing issues for several users.

New MLB experience is worse

[computerDub]

MLB subscribers are outraged with the new experience. The NextDef plug-in used in combination with Flash is causing show-stopping issues.

And it's working out so well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am not the type to just lower the boom on MLB.TV, but when the discussion boards are FULL of reported problems and evidence that almost NOTHING is working, it is difficult to read your blog entry without any sort of real apology without being very frustrated and angry," wrote one subscriber this morning, in a post that captures the general frustration and anger of hundreds of other commenters. "Is anyone reading these comments? Is the existence of the forum and this blog just a ploy to keep us quiet and let us vent into empty space? We need to have the feeling we are actually being heard. I know two things I am not hearing or seeing: an apology and the games."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_and_wireless&articleId=9131227&taxonomyId=15&intsrc=kc_top

Good riddance...

[toonces33]

There is something about Silverfish that causes Firefox to leak memory like a sieve. If I have a lot of tabs open, it exhausts virtual memory in about a day or so.

I have used Ad-Block+ to block some of the Silverfish scripts which 'fixes' the problems. Yeah, some things don't work quite right, but I don't care...

No problem, it'll be in the next 'security update'

[Anonymous Coward]

"including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin"

Oh, the irony.

"It looks like you're trying to install some MSFT cruft to your machine. Options are [Allow] [Yes, of course] [Hell, why not!]".

I'm sure it will be included in the next 'vital' update(s) for security, .NET, IE, Messenger, Office whatever...

Adobe has shown stronger committment

[voss]

Adobe supports cross-platform products

Acrobat Reader and flash have both been made in multiple OS'es and multiple cpu architectures. They are even actively developing an ARM version of flash for cheapie netbooks.

Microsofts cross platform committment has been spotty at best and a joke at worst.

Free Flex Builder for Unemployed Developers

[Futurepower(R)]

If you spent all day reading Slashdot, you would know this already: --grin-- Free Flex Builder for Unemployed Developers.

Poor performance of the new system

[cdwdwkr]

The new Adobe system is not exactly impressive. I'm no fan of Microsoft and wasn't an MLB subscriber last year. This year I signed up. So far the games I've tried to watch have been almost unwatchable with the settings on thier "high def" levels. The games pause for 30 seconds plus sometimes. Often it gets into a mode where it pauses for say 5 seconds followed by 10 seconds of video and another pause. I'm running this on a year old dual core computer with plenty of memory, Win XP, and have 6Mbps+ download rates. MLB's website says you need 3 Mbps for their highest quality settings. The MLB forum is loaded with posts complaining about this. I'm hoping this is just teething trouble with the new setup.

Holy Security Hell Batman...

[TheNetAvenger]

>>>including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin

Ouch... Do you realize how many outdated Flash players are running around these IT environments?

Not that users should have admin, but if the IT people were doing their jobs, Silverlight is an automatic update/patch on Windows and can be installed originally via Windows Update. Flash requires a bit more work and admin scripts to install the updates.

Which is safer, a third party plugin with 1000s of exploits, or a managed code, and sandboxed plugin from MS that is automatically kept up to date without administrator intervention?

So these 'work environments' have Flash plugins installed and running for the 'ease' of their users, and have no idea the security risk this involves; therefore, there are more people using Flash so it must be the best solution?

I understand MLB's point here, but really is the direction we really want the industry to go, with Adobe being the 'security' experts protecting our users let alone the additional work IT people have to go through to keep Flash Updated?

Scary as hell, and if I was a malious software coder, I know where my biggest market and ease of access exists - Flash...

Flash - Admin updates required
Flash - 1000s of 'known' exploits
Flash - Really bad threading and performance

Silverlight - Non-Admin Automatic Updates(Windows)
Silverlight - Virtually no exploits with additional sandbox containing it
Silverlight - Great performance, and the best Video streaming delivery for SD and HD content. PERIOD.

For users that think Flash is 'optimized' open a Web Page with Flash Advertising and then open another page with a HD Silverlight Video or Silverlight animated content. Notice the CPU/GPU usage for the Flash 'ad' alone is 5-10x the Silverlight control, even when the system is decoding HD video.

--
Speaking of Flash
--
Tip of the Day For Overlockers...

If you want a 'quick' stress test of your your overclock settings. Simply open a few web pages with a Flash ad and Flash video content.

If your system is clocked too high or you have voltage settings wrong, etc, Flash will pop the system almost instantly. Something running a 24hr burn in test won't even do on some systems.

When our techs overclock the new AMDs or i7s, they boot into a test environment and run Flash to see test stability, especially with SMP or multi/core/thread CPUs.

This is something a couple of our techs discovered with two test i7 systems a few months back, as they ran the 24hr stress tests, and including throwing the biggest and baddest games at the system.

It passed with flying colors until they had it totally fail when opening a web page after the Flash plugin was installed.

Turns out one system was at the 'edge' of its abilities and the other system was a new mobo and the tech didn't properly set the CPU voltage.

So it was 'good' old Flash that popped both systems even after they survived 48hrs of stress tests shoving GPU and CPU to full load in numerous applications and scenarios.

So if nothing else, keep Flash around for system building...

* This is not Windows specific...

* This is only true of the official Adobe Flash Player as far as our Techs have found.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[mariushm]

flash is slow in window mode because it doesn't use video acceleration. in full screen it does so cpu usage is moot.

flash supports h264 playback and mp3/aac so it supports the latest video standard, highest quality possible right now.

You can create content with a lot of software products out there and use maybe the best encoder possible for free, as it's open source.

With Silverlight you can only work with WMV or Microsoft technologies and you have to pay royalties and buy the video codec.

You're blocking yourself into a closed source standard which Microsoft may choose to drop at any time, without any real advantage (drm is not advantage because there are tools out there that strip the DRM)

Silverlight can slow your computer just as well as flash. Being a .net extension or whatever developers will be able to really abuse your system, much more easier than with Flash. You just don't see Silverlight out there because they don't care to code for it.

here's a tip for you. Open your silverlight player, run a movie. This one is decoded with hardware acceleration, with overlay mode and all the tricks possible to keep the cpu usage low.
Now open another window and run another movie at the same time. That one will be decoded in software because you already use the hardware with the first movie.
Now open a third movie and so on... you'll see the cpu go nuts.

I've just tested playing HD youTube movies at the same time on a Q6600 processor, all at stock. 40% with two movies, 45 with 3, 51 with 4, 65 with 5 movies and it started to stutter, maybe because i don't have enough bandwidth.

So I don't know, maybe you shouldn't build computers if you don't know how.. or something like that.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[Joe The Dragon]

flash has MSI Installers and Flash Player Catalog for Microsoft Systems Management http://www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution/strategies/sms.html.

anyways flash is just about forced on you even when just trying to get divers / go very many web sites so it gets installed when people are makeing the images / and should eases gets updated when it is time to make a new one.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[geekoid]

"Silverlight - Great performance, and the best Video streaming delivery for SD and HD content. PERIOD."

That is not true. PERIOD.
What is that the Ad ergo punctuation fallacy?

Ah, so you have drank the kool-aid. Well done.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[Frenchman113]

1) I have no idea why you called MP3 the "highest quality possible right now"

2) Sure Flash supports H.264. It supports the highly crippled (read: useless) Main Profile.

3) Do you think 40% CPU usage on a Q6600 for 720p (YouTube) at Main Profile is acceptable? The same video would use maybe 5% CPU with CoreAVC and perhaps 8% with ffdshow.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[geekoid]

Hint: Your people are doing something wrong, and I doubt it's flashes fault.

AT best, a game is a stress test for the video processor.
Not a modern CPU.

Of course, if your techs where good, they would know exactly which tool to be using to do that AND know how to write there own.

A game for a stress test? fuck IT now doesn't knop there ass from a hole in the ground.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[benwaggoner]

You can create content with a lot of software products out there and use maybe the best encoder possible for free, as it's open source.

...and there aren't a huge number of WMV encoders out there? Plenty for free.

Silverlight 3 will support MPEG-4 files with H.264 as well, so that's not going to be an ongoing issue anyway.

With Silverlight you can only work with WMV or Microsoft technologies and you have to pay royalties and buy the video codec.

In what scenario would you pay codec royalites with Silverlight and not with Flash? H.264 and VC-1 are both MPEG-LA licensed codecs with similar terms.

here's a tip for you. Open your silverlight player, run a movie. This one is decoded with hardware acceleration, with overlay mode and all the tricks possible to keep the cpu usage low.

Silverlight 2 doesn't use GPU acceleration. That's being added for Silverlight 3.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[Anonymous Coward]

With Flash it is easier, you just open one movie and CPU goes to 100%

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[mariushm]

1) read again, i was talking about h264. And depending how you look at it, even MP3/AAC is the highest quality right now, from quality/bitrate point of view.

2) I don't see the Main profile so useless. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264), the difference between Main and High are Monochrome support (useless for streaming videos, 8x8 vs. 4x4 Transform Adaptivity, Quantization Scaling Matrices and Separate Cb and Cr QP control. Only the two in the middle would bring better quality but at a decreased decoding performance.

Considering you'll encode the movies with very high quality Main profile settings in the first place but at pretty low bitrate (because you're streaming the video) the benefits the High profile would bring you would be very small.

3. YES. When you're going to stream a movie you're also going to watch it, probably in Full Screen, so your computer won't do anything else. 99% of the people will just watch ONE movie so Flash might just as well use 80% of the processor.

Keep in mind the processor usage is higher in window mode because it's not able to use hardware acceleration, because if it did other objects in the Flash would not be rendered over the video properly. In Full Screen, Flash uses hardware acceleration and the processor usage decreases, probably to around 10-15%.

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have NOT seen this behaviour ever. I've spent the past couple days watching flash videos of pycon presentations, going fullscreen with the video always increases my CPU usage, significantly. this is on ubuntu jaunty with the latest flash player available, and w/ proprietary nvidia drivers. Why am I not seeing HW accellerated video decoding?

Re:Holy Security Hell Batman...

[TheNetAvenger]

flash is slow in window mode because it doesn't use video acceleration. in full screen it does so cpu usage is moot

That is great for flash animations and video ads isn't it? Technically you are wrong about this as well.

flash supports h264 playback and mp3/aac so it supports the latest video standard, highest quality possible right now

h.264 is good, but best? MP3 best? Really? Then why are most BluRay movies encoded in VC1 (which is aka WMV) ?

With Silverlight you can only work with WMV or Microsoft technologies and you have to pay royalties and buy the video codec.

Wrong again, have you even looked at Silverlight?

Additionally if you want to talk about 'pay' do you have any idea of the Flash 'Sever' costs? Something Silverlight DOES NOT REQUIRE or NEED, and even if the site wants to do more advanced 'media' serving, Windows Server provides all the 'extra' features with no additional costs.

On the high end of Video and content providing by both technologies, here is your 'pay' plan...

Flash = Server + Flash Server
Silverlight = Windows Server

And the Windows Server option is not only cheaper, but you get the full Server OS to use for other things than just Flash delivery.

----

That is where I stopped reading your reply, three strikes and you don't have a clue...

While I agree with the sentiment..

[Junta]

The fact that Adobe happens to explicitly exert effort to support Linux makes their solution no less proprietary.

It is a more flexible and ubiquitous proprietary technology, but that is not inherently more 'open' by simple virtue of it supporting more permutations.

A non-proprietary technology would be one the open source community could re-create without reverse engineering. Interestingly enough, I think Silverlight as it stands at this moment can be re-implemented by the community more readily than Flash. The 'moonlight' implementation compared to Silverlight is much 'closer' to functional relative to the relationship between Gnash and Flash given the time each has been able to reproduce the respective technologies.

That being said, I still would actually throw in at this point with Adobe rather than MS. Adobe is straightforward about the technology and their approach. MS is talking up their 'openness' and making 'some' good on it, but given their history, it's easy to perceive they play that up out of mere necessity, will somehow prevent moonlight from being 'good enough', and if they ever manage to extinguish flash, drop all pretense of openness in a heartbeat and release a major version of silverlight to ensure obsolescence of the open implementation.

It's not uncommon, there is a prevalent pro-nVidia sentiment in the Linux user world, for example. Yes, AMD and Intel both have much better explicit open-source efforts. Yes, AMD graphics hardware is viable in the high-end relative to nVidia. However, the best 3D and video performance under linux continues to be the nVidia driver, and that is often preferred despite its closed nature to open alternatives. AMD's closed driver has been ok on the 3D front, but more prone to bugs yet and no video decode api supported yet. I say this despite explicitly choosing Intel on my laptop and AMD graphics for my desktop, just recognizing a common view I see.

Misleading Article... Not 100% Flash

[Eyah....TIMMY]

Yes everyone has flash, but what they don't tell you is that you'll also need the Swarmcast NexDef browser plug-in.
Check out the not so great review of the flash/nexdef experience: MLB Support Forums

Oh and if you want to also understand this from Microsoft's perspective: Miscosoft SL Team Blog
The CBS March Madness HQ streaming was SilverLight and was a huge success.

Re:Misleading Article... Not 100% Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

The NexDef browser plugin uses peer-to-peer for streaming of the highest definition content (the old streams of the past do not require the plugin).

Most Linux users are likely quite happy that the MLB site went back to using Flash. Last year, Linux support was hacked together through a third party unsupported program. This year, the games can be watched through the browser. You can even use the NexDef plugin on linux by manually running the mac versions' installed autobahn.jar java file (and it works fine).

While Flash support has traditionally been lagging, Microsoft technologies have traditionally lagged as much or more so: We didn't even see an official release of a Moonlight plugin until recently, and now Silverlight is pushing forward with v2: how much do you bet a site like MLB would force a version requirement of 2.x or greater for Silverlight, once again leaving Linux users in the dark?

Re:Misleading Article... Not 100% Flash

[japhering]

Yes everyone has flash, but what they don't tell you is that you'll also need the Swarmcast NexDef browser plug-in.
Check out the not so great review of the flash/nexdef experience: MLB Support Forums [mlbsupport.com]

As well as the fact that you must subscribe to the service.. no free games ever...

Re:Misleading Article... Not 100% Flash

[geekoid]

Wait, you mean the large corporation behind a product declares it a success? Even though their customer didn't? that's shocking~

Both suck, and neither is needed to stream.

Re:Misleading Article... Not 100% Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

I had nothing but problems trying to watch on opening night. I had it running okay for a bit until I installed the NexDef plug-in and then everything went to hell (on 2 computers trying both IE and Firefox). What annoyed me most was that after installing the plug-in, and even rebooting, I kept getting the pop-up window telling me to install it. I'm hoping it was just opening day glitches and things get better, but I'm going to be pretty pissed if it doesn't improve very quickly.

Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Futurepower(R)]

"You'd think that ... they [Microsoft] would have spent a little more effort making sure everything worked just right..."

I agree with everything you said.

It's interesting that the failures of technological companies are often social failures, not fundamentally technological failures.

What theories do you have about why Microsoft allowed the failure to happen? Has Microsoft become unable to function? Or, is Microsoft accustomed to its virtual monopoly causing people to accept Microsoft software no matter how buggy? Or, what?

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[techno-vampire]

What theories do you have about why Microsoft allowed the failure to happen?

Judging by some of Microsoft's recent bad moves, such as the bewildering array of Vista versions, re-working of the Office UI for Office 2007, the enormous bloat they added to it and so on, I'm beginning to believe that the programmers and developers no longer control development. It's beginning to look like MS is being controlled by marketdroids who not only have no clue what their customers want, they have no desire to gain one. It's a shame, really, they used to be able to produce good products that people actually wanted.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Man On Pink Corner]

What theories do you have about why Microsoft allowed the failure to happen? Has Microsoft become unable to function?

It goes to the top. Until the board comes to its senses and gets rid of Ballmer, Microsoft is going to continue its slow, steady slouch toward... ... well, toward a lucrative government bailout.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, any failure in any company can be blamed on those at the top. They're the ones who have the ultimate power to change things (even if they didn't cause them, and were hired on later), and they're the ones that are paid ridiculous sums of money for their supposed talent. If they're so skilled and talented, they should be able to manage their company so that it performs well.

Of course, a lot of a company's problems can be blamed on its structure, corporate culture, etc., but again, these are things that upper management has the power to look into and change, by drastic means if necessary.

Personally, I think that large companies have a big disadvantage in that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and that they're so large it's too hard for them to change quickly and adapt, and there's too much infighting. It would probably be better if many very large companies split up into smaller companies. MS should have long, long ago split up into separate OS and app companies. Instead, they've squandered enormous sums of money on failed or unprofitable ventures like Zune, Xbox, MSN, etc., which could have been returned to shareholders instead.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Grishnakh]

I'd like to add that you can see examples of how a company's upper management totally influences the way it does things. For instance, MS is always doing a sloppy job on stuff, and has really horrible marketing (e.g., the MSN butterflies) that people make fun of. Their upper management hasn't changed substantially in several decades now. Apple, OTOH, always is really anal about little details like their packaging, making sure their user experience is just the way they want it, etc., and this has always been attributed to Steve Jobs (they sure weren't like that under Sculley). (For the record, I'm no Apple fanboy, as I'm a Linux fan instead, but I do appreciate Apple's dedication to quality products and styling, even if it's not exactly my own taste. Just like I'd never buy a Rolls-Royce even if I was a billionaire, though I can appreciate their styling, and I can appreciate good country music like Johnny Cash even though I don't really like country music.)

But it's not going to change until the board throws Ballmer out and puts someone better in his place. But with the way large corporations work, that's not likely to happen, unless MS starts having really serious financial problems. Some shareholders are upset and complaining (although that makes me wonder why they still own stock), but it's not enough to force a change.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[nitro77]

It's a shame, really, they used to be able to produce good products that people actually wanted.

It is a shame. But, the last good MS product that I actually wanted was MS Basic for my Heathkit H8 computer.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, although I think the infamous Dell "Adamo" video is a much better target to pick on than MSN's butterfly logo. It's hard to see evidence of systemic incompetence or indifference in a simple logo.

If you want to see why Apple's market share is increasing at Wintel's expense, check out that video.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - thats what you get when a company has such a big share of the market. They are not longer interested at the consumer, because the consumer buys anything they throw on the market.

Sure there will be some hiccups, but in general the consumer has no choice, but have to swallow anything they are served with. Well - at least that is the way Microsoft wanted it, and succeeded in for years.

The massive rejection of Vista must have come as a dazzling shock. The consumer did something Microsoft never expected - they made a choice! They even had the guts to use something different than the holy Microsoft stuff...

Massive panic was setting in, and Microsoft started pulling all the strings they had. They corrupted a standard institution, they used pressure to push other OS'es from the market, even if they had the tiniest market share.

And that is what is happening now. Microsoft is fighting to get the total control back, so they can dictate again to the costumers what they want to have or not.

Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle and the consumer has realized they have a choice. Microsoft is now trying fiercely to get this genie back into the bottle, so they can resume business as usual. I will be interesting too see if they will succeed...

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[JohnBailey]

It's beginning to look like MS is being controlled by marketdroids who not only have no clue what their customers want, they have no desire to gain one. It's a shame, really, they used to be able to produce good products that people actually wanted.

Don't forget Uncle Fester is a salesman. And he is also the big boss. Bill Gates, for all his megalomaniac tendencies, was at least technically literate. So he could provide a steering influence to the company on technical grounds rather than purely make money to finance the next version which makes more money to pay for the next version. Selling a technological product requires the people making the decisions to be technical people. Nothing wrong with profits, so long as profits are not the only consideration.

Or to use the beloved car analogy.. When the colour and appearance of a car is the most important aspect for the company, the car is going to eventually be crap if they ignore the trivial things like the engine and the steering. Which is why a Ferarri doesn't just look good, and a Toyota doesn't just run well.

Question is... What happens to Microsoft if the WOW doesn't start with 7?

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they expect that people will accept that 1. their products suck, and 2. People should suck that up. Just pay and suck it up. When a competitor (who may also be providing hookers and blow) offer something that doesn't get the lower tier people bitched out by upper management about why things down't work, they will make sure by whatever means they have, that the crapware goes. If flash works and silverblight doesn't, then flash in in like a flash, and the blight that is silverblight is gone.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Bert64]

Producing good products that people actually want is expensive...
Producing crap products that users are forced to use because there are no compatible alternatives is much cheaper... MS just aren't used to competing on a level playing field.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[gbjbaanb]

It's interesting that the failures of technological companies are often social failures, not fundamentally technological failures.

True, but often its the technical failures that presage these (after all, if everything worked fine, why would there be a social problem to solve?!)

From TFA:

The other major issue was that baseball considered Silverlight too unstable. There were some high-profile glitches, including last year's opening day, which saw many MLB.com subscribers struggling to log in and others who were unable to watch games. The malfunctions lasted several days.

They then go on to review NetFlix's problems that were suspected of being a Silverlight issue.

I suspect the only social failure in this case was MS's inability to hype silverlight up so much that any technical issues were blamed elsewhere and not on silverlight itself.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, maybe, but the last MS product like that I can think of is MS-DOS 5.0... so it's not exactly news.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[marcosdumay]

Oh, they used to have some nice games for my 4MHz Z80 based TK90X (64KB of RAM, not like your old busted Heathkit). Also, they used to make some nice keyboards and joysticks just last decade. Too bad their drivers got so bad that their hardware nowadays is only usable at Linux, but they still excel at Linux.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[marcosdumay]

"Producing good products that people actually want is expensive..."

Doesn't need to be. Of course, ensuring that software has a small number of bugs is expensive, but that is not the only aspect of quality, most of it comes, from vision and planning. Bugfixing can't save a bad product.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[DuckDodgers]

I agree with every criticism you wrote except Office 2007. After a few weeks, I found it far more intuitive to use and productive than any previous version of Office.

I think it's a fair criticism of Microsoft that they often rearrange GUIs and document command line alternatives poorly solely for the purpose of selling training and tech support. But the Office 2007 UI redesign, for at least some tasks, seems to be a case (exception?) where they did it for the right reason - to make it better.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, want the port of Empire Total War on their Singularity OS.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Grishnakh]

Actually, I'm not talking about only MSN's butterfly logo. I'm talking about their whole advertising campaign where they had men dressed in gay-looking butterfly costumes on TV commercials, and even running around the streets of Manhattan. By itself, the logo is just lame, but when you account for the costumes, then it shows systemic incompetence.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like I'd never buy a Rolls-Royce even if I was a billionaire, though I can appreciate their styling, and I can appreciate good country music like Johnny Cash even though I don't really like country music.

Could you provide just one more analogy? I feel I'm on the verge of understanding exactly what you mean, but I'm not quite there yet.

Re:Failures of tech. companies are often social.

[hanekhw]

I'd tend to agree with you. The OS model MS uses mandates that to install any add-ons to the base OS such as Silverlight you must have Administrative rights. That excludes a hugh portion of any networked user group. So, while Silverlight is practical among Home Users its unworkable unless a networked organization installs it first. The developers should have told the marketing people this. If they did and were ignored then they set themselves up to fail.

Maybe it's not the tech?

[count_schemula]

At mlb.com yesterday, there was almost nothing but complaints about poor service for both audio and video feeds. Funny I can't find any of the RSS feed articles from yesterday... all the negative posts have been removed from mlb.com but they all went more or less "what a waste of $109."

MLB.com longtime paying customer

[Mondak]

I think this is year 9 or so for me as a paying customer of mlb.com. I will say that Microsoft did a decent job for them a few years back when they switched from Realplayer the Windows Media Player. Maybe the relationship and history of performing had something do to with getting Silverlight in the first place. A few posters have suggested that it was arm twisting / bribes etc. that got Silverlight in the door, but so often it is the same way as anyone buys anything. Microsoft told them they would perform just like they have in the past. They did not. Kudos to mlb.com for not being afraid to go with what gives their users a consistent experience instead of going with the status quo. The new player is fast and stable so far with one day under my belt. I don't really like the way they present the information, but I am used to running the Yahoo gameday for the stats while I listen to the game in mlb.com anyway so I can live with that.

Drops silver for fleshlight?

[bluefoxlucid]

I read this entirely too wrong.

Worst part of the Mac OS X

[brendank310]

The worst part of OS X is its flash implementation. I can't have my Macbook Pro on my lap if something using flash is running. I think it's time for Adobe to optimize its products for OS X and Linux.

Re:Worst part of the Mac OS X

[count_schemula]

Adobe and Apple are in some sort of weird cold war. They stick it to each other in sly ways.

Re:Worst part of the Mac OS X

[JackAxe]

I agree for the most part, as the Mac side does need some more work, but I can attest that this problem is more on the developer's back than Adobe and Apples. It's the inexperience of some of these Flash devs that create SWF that eat up way too much CPU. From my own experience, the projects I build, always idle back down between 1.5% and 2% -- unfortunately Flash will never idle down to 0%. I also test my projects on an old DP G4 along with my newer Macs and PC, and I make sure that my CPU peaks are always reasonable -- nothing bothers me more than viewing a simple banner animation eating up 100%+ of my CPU(s) time. Even most of these Flash videos players are crap, and use up way more CPU than needed.

A more accurate analogy:

[Futurepower(R)]

"I understand [my puppy] someday might grow up to bite me."

Bad analogy. This is the correct analogy:

"My puppy has bitten me severely several times and I understand when he is larger the bites may be even worse."

Haven't you heard of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"? Here are 6,780 links.

Re:A more accurate analogy:

[myxiplx]

You're on the right lines, but when it comes to Microsoft, you're probably closer with:

"That's no puppy, it's a sodding crocodile, look, it just tore your arm off!"

Microsoft fans remind me of Monty Python's Black Knight: "It's just a scratch..."

Netflix you listening!!!

[ScaredOfTheMan]

I pray to the gods of streaming video make Netflix follow suit! I refuse to install Silverlight on my machine, in fact I click on the view now button, just to get the 'install player' message in the hopes someone is watching how many abandoned sessions there are!

I am willing to miss out on part of my netflix service because because of their awful choice of player. If Hulu and now the MLB can stream full length movies with flash, so can you! And I watch more movies on Hulu because of that!

Re:Netflix you listening!!!

[aaron.axvig]

I pray to the gods of streaming video that Netflix doesn't follow suit! I hate running flash on my machine, it is such a performance dog. In fact, I and millions of other people regularly click on the view now button, and are rewarded with a stellar viewing experience that is capable of streaming high-quality videos (not that other products aren't capable of such)!

Many millions are able to really enjoy their full netflix service because of their common sense in recognizing that it is OK to install Silverlight on their computers. It does not have a separate updater always running (Flash does) but rather uses the one that comes with Windows. It works in multiple browsers on multiple platforms. If Hulu and the MLB can stream full length movies with Silverlight, I recommend to all of my friends to join in the party! And we all watch more movies on whichever service we want because we aren't fools that don't install Silverlight because of some personal bias against Microsoft!!

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[mbooth9517]

Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.

Is linux utterly superflous and of no interest to anyone?

I thought the usual line of thinking was that monopolies were bad, so why does that not apply here? Is it because its Microsoft?

Screw Flash

[techsoldaten]

I really don't care what technology they use, just make it work.

Today, the audio of the first 2 innings of the Red Sox game were replaced with a high pitching whining noise. Opening day and all I could do is turn off the sound.

M

Re:Screw Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because someone in the broadcast truck (the TV network's truck at the ballpark) unplugged the audio feed. That has nothing to do with Flash or Silverlight.

Re:Screw Flash

[brendank310]

That's what you get for being a sox fan.

Subscriber's Comments

[pinqkandi]

I'm a subscriber... the quality of the new Flash player is much, much lower than the Silverlight player. Additionally, there are many streaming issues (check out the support forums).

Forget the politics - I just want good video quality like last year!

It's the bottom of the ninth

[actionbastard]

And 0 and 2 to Ballmer.
MLB is up one zip on that last homerun by Adobe Flash.
"Bud" Selig goes into his windup...and Ballmer gives it tremendous jolt!
It's going, going, and it's gone!
Right off the 'Microsoft will give MLB all the assistance it needs in the way of servers, tech support, and donated Windows Server 2008 licenses in every MLB stadium across the country if you'll install Silverlight' sign in center field!
The crowd is going wild!
They're pouring onto the field!
They've got Selig down and there cramming Ubuntu Server DVDs down his throat!
And wait...they're after Ballmer now hurling chairs...but he seems to be holding them off with free copies of...Yes! Windows XP!
I've never seen anything like this in all my years in Baseball.
This is truly a sad, sad, day.
This is Bob Uecker signing off.
Next, 'Silverlight' returns to MLB after the All Star break 2009. Right after these messages.

Easy

[geekoid]

Some developer decided they wanted to pad their resume with MS's latest technology.
You see this happen all the time in the industry.

There is no justification for using new technology in a large production environments. Your risk is too high.

It's very obvious

[geekoid]

Flash, savior of the Universe.
Flash, It will save everyone of us
Flash It's a miracle
Flash, King of the impossible

I mean, duh.

Re:It's very obvious

[spartacus_prime]

"Flash! Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth [from Silverlight]!"

Why use a clone when the original is just better

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is the overall winner. Its been around much longer, its got user and developer base that are already familiar with it. Why use a clone when you dont need to? The only advantage to silverlight is if you are purely running on .NET platform and even with that silverlight is still buggy.

The answer is simple

[Digital_Mercenary]

If Microsoft wants to compete with the Adobe/flash product line. It should stat in the open source community. It should support efforts of projects like Red 5. If it wants to start a new standard the open source community would be happy to provide feedback and support. SilverLight should be open to the public as a free, platform independent standard to compete with FLASH. If it played it's cards right; in 5 years Silverlight could be a legit competitor.

Yeah, I know, It will never happen.

Yea!!!

[m509272]

I guess all the "persuasion" MS dumped into getting them to do this in the first place just couldn't offset the crap they had to deal with. I for one am ecstatic. I will never install Silverlight, ever, period. I've seen I don't know how many products or methodologies that MS came out with that they just abandon and say convert or too bad.

The next step is to ...

[Skapare]

... completely get rid of Flash altogether. Embedded video is being standardized. Video through a launched video player already works, anyway. Eventually no plugin at all will be needed. And for Windows users, that's important, since those are the people that are so vulnerable to plugging in viruses and other exploits, spamware, spyware, etc. Then the next issue we'll have is getting MLBAM and others to encode in an unencumbered format like BBC's Dirac format.

Re:Why use a clone when the original is just bette

[Skapare]

Why even use Flash at all, when browsers can play video directly. They can already do that by launching a player. Soon, embedded video will be supported as the standards are adopted.

It's the install base

[symbolset]

They were counting on the massive market share of Vista to put it over.

Oops.

Ooh, Mr Silverlight...

[symbolset]

Won't you please support Ogg, theora, flv, FLAC, quicktime and h.264? Please? Pretty please? I thought not. I didn't want it from you anyway. You have cooties.

And really, quit anthropomorphizing proprietary communication protocols. They're not people. You can't ask them for stuff. And stop being surprised that Microsoft's online video format supports WMV: "Windows Media Video".

Why bother with either?

[deanston]

ummm... what happened to just watching baseball on TV or at the ballpark normally? Or do people started watching all sports games at work? I barely have enough time catching up on /., twittering, connecting on FB, chatting, checking out Reader and dozens RSS feeds, blogging, and downloading songs... Who has time for proprietary plug-ins that make people who should not be designing web sites think they can design?

Re:Why bother with either?

[iamnobody2]

Because you can watch any game you want, which is especially good if you're a fan of a team you don't live nearby. The games on tv at any given place are only a fraction of the available games. Most places have most of the games for the nearest team on a channel, then a few various games throughout the week. If you live far away from your team, you're likely to never see them, especially if they're not the evil empire. Also with mlb.tv premium you can watch several games at once, have dvr functionality, watch the game with any announcers, including radio announcers, etc etc. It's a service for serious baseball fans, but one that is wanted.

Can a post be insightful with only one character?

[symbolset]

$

I'm seeing this meme a lot

[symbolset]

And Bill G is no longer at Microsoft.

He's still Chairman of the Board. The rest of the board is probably people who agreed to rubber stamp whatever he wants. He still draws a salary, benefits and options. He still gets royalties on the myriad patents and copyrights he's glommed onto over the decades, including BASIC (grandfathered into Visual Studio no doubt). He still sets policy. He stars in their advertising. How retired is he, exactly?

Flex Versus Silverlight Meme

[broward]

Flex versus Silverlight meme from three months ago, although I first ran this graph one year ago for a client deciding on technology direction...

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=flex_vs_silverlight

Rate-of-growth for Flex and Silverlight is almost the same and Flex maintains a comfortable lead.

Del Adamo video?

[Futurepower(R)]

Del Adamo video? This one? It certainly isn't attractive to me, but what didn't you like about it?

Re:Del Adamo video?

[Man On Pink Corner]

This one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUJqWc6seYk

Warning: NSFL (Not Safe for Lunch)

Re:Del Adamo video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap that's awesome. It's like they hired Tim and Eric to do the commercial.

Re:Del Adamo video?

[DinDaddy]

Wow. The machines themselves are probably good, but that ad is unbelievably bad. Right there with the Songsmith one.

Pay service?

[CopaceticOpus]

It's too bad that MLB charges money for this service. Considering the number of ads that naturally fit into a baseball game broadcast, it should still be profitable to broadcast it for free. This works well for TV stations which broadcast baseball games, and it's also been very successful for the web broadcasts of the NCAA basketball tournament in recent years.

Of course, it's not free because the MLB won't pass up this (or any) chance to make money. Never mind the fact that the game broadcasts themselves are also ads, since the fans often buy merchandise and tickets.

I would love to see the day come when virtually any sporting event is broadcast online for free. The economics seem to add up. Because of the importance of a live broadcast, and the frequency of breaks in the action, ads actually make sense as a way to pay for sports broadcasts. I don't often tolerate ads for any other sort of video.

Re:Pay service?

[drspliff]

The American way is to 1) Charge for access, 2) Display adverts anyway, 3) Laugh at captive customer base, 4) Hike prices until customers start complaining more 5) Profit.

What's the phrase... "As high as the market will bare", oh yeah that's a good analogy for screwing customers because you can!

Re:Pay service?

[yuna49]

Considering the number of ads that naturally fit into a baseball game broadcast, it should still be profitable to broadcast it for free.

With only 500,000 subscribers I'm not sure this is true. While that's not an insignificant number, it's not obvious to me you'll be generating the same $15-20/subscriber/month MLB gets now from advertising revenues alone. Then there are the costs involved of negotiating advertising contracts, presumably with national advertisers, to reach this small market.

There's another issue that's not so obvious when it comes to national services like MLB's. Teams in weaker markets (Milwaukee, for instance) are perenially concerned about competition from stronger teams with a national reputation like the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, or Dodgers. Revenues from league telecasts on the networks or services like MLB.TV are distributed equally across all the teams; teams naturally get to keep all their local television revenues. Having something akin to a YouTube channel with all games available in real time poses a serious threat to this business model. Making it a pay service targeted at the most devout fans limits the threat it poses to revenues for teams like the Brewers.

Re:Pay service?

[BooRolla]

Add to that that sports are something you typically want to see live. Tivo doesn't make as much sense with sports as compared to comedies.

Authoritative response!

[Futurepower(R)]

Note who posted the parent message: Miguel de Icaza. He should know. Here's an interesting interview: Talking Mono with Miguel de Icaza

Another sociological failure of a tech. company.

[Futurepower(R)]

Amazingly bad commercial. What were the people at Dell thinking? Isn't there any review of new commercials? Didn't they show the commercial to a few people before releasing it?

Open source moonlight?

[pallmall1]

Our codecs work in both Silverlight 3 and our open source Moonlight implementation.

You mean that "open source" Moonlight that you are leaving full of Microsoft patent timebombs -- Microsoft patent infected code that is being incorporated into Moonlight under the guise of being open because of the Novell Microsoft agreement? The "open source" moonlight that is only safe on Novell's (MS) linux?

Take a walk back to Redmond with that "our open source moonlight" bullshit.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[cybrthng]

So its better to used a closed source system a-la flash? With all the hate you ahve regardling moonlight, why not fork it and make your own as you see fit?

Re:Open source moonlight?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Why? I still have to get driven to a web page that requires me to use silverlight - even one that it's not important to me. Why would people reimplement something that not many people uses (and the situation doesn't seem to be improving).

Hell, I don't even have mono or java installed here, I never needed them. What kind of pages do people visit to hit one that requires java?. Flash, on the other hand, is used everywhere. It won the war *long* time ago, but MS, its parters and people like the mono moonlight team seem to look it from a very different (and unreal) perspective.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[Sique]

What kind of pages do people visit to hit one that requires java?

Your mileage may vary, but I have to use webpages that require Java every day. Most of the configuration tools I am working with are Java applets embedded in webpages.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[ClosedSource]

You claim that Moonlight code is "infected" with code that implements a Microsoft patent. Since the source code is available to you, you should be able to show us a sample of the code and tell us which MS patent it embodies.

If you can't find it, look in your ass. Many Slashdotters have been able to pull stuff out of theirs.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[pallmall1]

Since the source code is available to you, you should be able to show us a sample of the code and tell us which MS patent it embodies. If you can't find it, look in your ass.

Why bother? There are chunks of moonlight code floating in the toilet every time I take a Ballmer.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[SavvyPlayer]

Please share with us the many Microsoft patent timebombs embedded in Mono and Moonlight. The code is open because it is GPL -- the Novell agreement has no bearing on the nature of the project.

Re:Open source moonlight?

[shutdown -p now]

You mean that "open source" Moonlight that you are leaving full of Microsoft patent timebombs -- Microsoft patent infected code that is being incorporated into Moonlight under the guise of being open because of the Novell Microsoft agreement?

First of all, there is no Microsoft code that is being incorporated into Moonlight. Microsoft provides some closed-source codecs, but those are packaged separately.

As for Silverlight itself, all the relevant specs are covered by the Open Specification Promise, so Moonlight is quite safe to use on any Linux box - insofar as Linux itself doesn't violate any MS patents (heh!).

So why don't you take a walk back to your basement instead?

Flash feels the /. love

[heffrey]

Funny how a closed source proprietary tech like Flash can get so much love from the /. crowd. I seem to recall it being the subject of much ire not so long ago. What changed? Oh yeah, Silverlight appeared and so Flash became good because anything that can stop MS is good. My enemies enemies are my friends, I guess.

But what about the actual technology? For video it's no contest. Silverlight is streets ahead of Flash. Much more parsimonious with precious bandwidth and excellent scaling. But this isn't about the best technology is it? No, it's religous wars. Same as it ever was.

Re:Flash feels the /. love

[maugle]

If you read the article (or hell, even the summary), you'd find that no, Silverlight is obviously NOT better, because even with plenty of assistance from Microsoft it still failed quite badly in a situation where Flash worked.

Re:Flash feels the /. love

[heffrey]

This same logic could be used to argue that Windows is clearly better than all other operating systems since it's the most successful. Do you agree with that statement?

They will have reverted to Flash for broader plug-in install base but in terms of the tech Silverlight video is superior. If you read all the comments to this story from MLB subscribers you will see that backed up.

Must have been a nightmare to implement

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only hypothesize why MLB moved away from Silverlight but my own company's experience was that there were some pretty significant undocumented and undisclosed bugs in SL1 and in the SL2 beta 2 (which MS pushed as production-ready) that made for significant compatibility and reliability headaches. We went back to embedded WMP and haven't had the stomach to revisit SL2, maybe we'll take another look when SL3 comes out.

Adobe Monopoly

[BurzumNazgul]

Tomorrow's headlines: "Microsoft files lawsuit against Adobe claiming Adobe is monopolizing the web presentation market."

What a surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft released buggy crapware? Never saw THAT coming!

Is there an OSS Flash equivalent?

[AP31R0N]

AFAIK, developing in Flash requires buying the developer tool. Is there a free as in beer Flash equivalent? If not, why? i think such a thing would be the cat's ass to developers.

i took a flash class in college. It gave me nightmares. Literal waking up in a cold sweat nightmares. i hated it with a passion. Direction otoH, was a breeze... but my school wouldn't let me use it because they figured design companies wouldn't use it because it was a pig (this was in the early aughties).

MLB Radio on Linux?

[highfidelitychris]

I had a heck of a time trying to get this to work on Ubuntu and was the main reason I can't use Linux on a daily basis. There was some ways to get it to work last year, but none of them ever worked for me. Does anyone know if this will work on Linux now?

Dishonesty is social failure.

[Futurepower(R)]

I respectfully disagree.

You said, "I suspect the only social failure in this case was MS's inability to hype silverlight..." That isn't sufficiently logical.

You seem to say that Microsoft's only social failure was that the company was not sufficiently dishonest enough to get people to believe they should accept the problems with Silverlight. But dishonesty is social failure.

Re:Dishonesty is social failure.

[Grishnakh]

You're obviously not looking at things from the perspective of a sociopath, which is the type of person that runs most large companies.

Dishonesty is only a social failure for other people. For the dishonest person, it's an asset, when they live among people who are generally honest and assume others to be honest.

For large values (99+%) of "small"

[weston]

...For small values of "works."

99+% of desktops disagree:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

By some accounts, that's larger than the number of clients surveyed that both support Javascript and have it fully enabled, and beats Java's penetration.

That's the data. As for anecdotes, it sucks that for whatever reason it's not working with whichever browser you've chosen, and I have an antipathy of Internet Explorer as high as anybody's (probably higher), so I agree you shouldn't have to use it. But to offer my own anecdote, I've had zero problems getting Flash to work with Firefox or Safari on Windows or on the Mac. Heck, it's working with Firefox under Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on one PC at home...

Re:For large values (99+%) of "small"

[Phase Shifter]

...For small values of "works."

99+% of desktops disagree:

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Those statistics work against you...99% penetration for the old, working version. The one that's giving me problems has less than 55% penetration in the US. (and hasn't reached 60% penetration anywhere)

An indication of problems?

Re:For large values (99+%) of "small"

[weston]

Those statistics work against you...

For small values of "Flash."

If the developers of a site choose to use Flash 10, then you and they have the same problem that would pop up if they'd chosen to write a standards-based site with E4X or other standardized ECMAScript additions, despite the fact that Javascript has wide penetration: a versioning issue, not a fundamental compatibility problem with the entire technology.

Heck, it's probably a milder problem. There are few desktops running Flash 9 that couldn't easily upgrade to Flash 10, and few people have any reason not to other than contrariness. Upgrading your ECMAScript engine without changing/upgrading your brower is going to be a whole lot more involved...

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 2.0, nobody care

[Anonymous Coward]

yes

In other words

[ClosedSource]

You're just repeating the Linux fan-box FUD. You haven't looked at any of the Moonlight code and you haven't done any research on MS patents.

Make that "fan-boy" not "fan-box"

[ClosedSource]

See title.

I had forgotten how bad...

[Futurepower(R)]

"... men dressed in gay-looking butterfly costumes on TV commercials..."

Thanks for the clarification. I had forgotten how bad those Microsoft commercials were. Definitely, "systemic incompetence", as you said.

Re:I had forgotten how bad...

[QuietObserver]

If I ever saw any of those ads, I'm thankful I forgot about them.

Then again, maybe that's another sign about how bad that campaign was.