Your state, via whatever initiative process is in place, will do the work for them. Every year, some new state initiative chips away at the drug war. Many now have medical marijuana laws. What is next?
All President Obama has to do is shut the hell up and let the states do his work. The minute he opens his big fat mouth about what the states are doing, even if in praise, the gig is up and it will become used as a "family values" wedge issue.
Most people, I believe, are okay with legalization. But they'll only admit in the voting booth when you give them an initiative to approve.
We know what the constitution, read literally, says. We just disagree what it actually *means*.
My interpretation? The constitution is the framework in which we have debates in this country. It defines *how* we deal things, not *what* those things we deal with should be.
There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research". Same with gay marriage. Same with giving blacks and women the right to vote. The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Removing "dont ask don't tell" and changing it to "tell, who cares". Obama is pro-gay, but he isn't beholden to just the gay community either. He is beholden to every citizen in the country, regardless if they voted for him. If he picked some openly gay pastor, you'd be happy but Obama would have pissed off another segment of our country.
But seriously, I might not agree with Mr. Warren's views and I might not be of the same faith as he, but you have to admit he gave a hell of a prayer.
I'm positive there are those "countdown until the end of the Bush Era" javascripts, java apps, billboards, phone apps, whatever. What happens when those counters hit zero? How many easter eggs you think are buried in those countdown programs?
Will this be like a mini-Y2K where planes fall from the sky because their bush-countdown clock used an unsigned int and crashed?
Did you eat toast this morning? Was it burnt? Did your cat ignore you like he always does? Nobody loving you? Is your nails painted black like the sun?
Come on man, this is the internet. You are getting peoples hopes up with this happy talk.
Obviously any attempt to move the date would also move the election. If anything, I'd say the 3 month gap between election and inauguration is proving to long.
This whole two year long election season has proven one thing to me--the system is showing its age and needs to be revised to meet the needs of our quick-fix, one-hour photo, instant-oatmeal society. Make the primary season shorter, remove the gap between the conventions and the general election, move the general election to the spring and give a month and a half for a transition instead of three.
Of course, there is a heck of a lot of inertia behind the system as-is, and I don't see any politician burning their political capital getting it improved.
We should move the whole election / inauguration business so that our* president gets sworn in during summer and at a time when people aren't at work. Seriously, he will be sworn in at 9am pacific time on a Tuesday. If it was me, we'd all vote for president in May and swear the person in at 6pm eastern (9pm pacific) in mid-June.
Any reason for this being in January besides aligning with the new year?
So I have an open source project for silverlight and post on the silverlight forums. Paranoid just a bit? Get a life dude. What have you done for open source?
Look, you choose to use an operating system built by essentially hobbyists in their spare time. Not everything is gonna work--that is a feature not a bug. And while I hate to say it, if you dont like that, perhaps you could dedicate some of your time to Moonlight so that you *can* use Silverlight stuff. Don't expect people to use their non-free time to develop software for a free operating system.
And yes, I do contribute to the free operating system I use in production environments--FreeBSD. I've contributed many ports to build and install CPAN modules. If something isn't in the ports tree and I need it, I don't just expect somebody else to put it there nor do I bitch, moan or cry--I take the time out of my day and write the damn port myself. That is how open source works--you give back to it and everybody benefits. If I didn't give back, I'd be a leech. That is also one of the biggest flaws in open source, you have to have the skills *to* give back, and not everybody does.
Silverlight exists, it is an amazing platform, and soon enough it will become widely adopted. Accept it as fact, and either either get used to being left out or get started working on Moonlight or something like it. Calling me a "Microsoft fanboy douche" will not result in the open source faeries giving you Silverlight support. You have to make it work!
Getting shit to work is what Linux is all about (or at least was all about). Back in the day, your only reward was the pride you got by getting $IMPOSSIBLE_DEVICE to work on Linux! Now I guess Linux is all about the politics of getting something for nothing. Sad....Now get the hell off my lawn!
If you toss out the concern over "safe patents", then by definition Moonlight is a safe alternative. It, and it's native AV codecs have probably as many patents as MPEG* and is probably just as safe. Why not spend your time working on getting Moonlight up to Silverlight 2? I mean hell, ffmpeg can handle Silverlight 2 codecs if compiled right, so I'd say it is a safe bet!
If you want to make this Stallman/FSFApproved Open-Source(tm) Free-Software(tm), then you can't just toss out the "patents are okay if I think they are safe". Thus you are stuck with Vorbis/Theora, and even then you might not get the Stallman Seal of Approval as Theora is based on VP3, which has a patent on it. Regardless of certification, neither have a way to be embedded Youtube style in a webpage.
PS: If it isn't Stallman/FSF Approved Open-Source(tm) Free-Software(tm), then I promise you that it will be a Slashdot story with just as many comments bitching about "Obama is not Open". Thus you *have no choice* but to use Vorbis/Theora, and I am only assuming that is Stallman Approved(tm). Dont like it? Welcome to open source politics.
If you ask any prominent republican, they'll tell you one of the big mistakes their party made this election was to only complain and never offer solutions. They admit that nobody likes it when a party does nothing but point out flaws in the other guy' solution, but never comes up with a plan of their own to fix it.
Dont make the same mistake as the republicans! If you are going to poke a million holes in the other guy and not come up with your own fix, you offer nothing to the conversation.
How do you embed video on a webpage without Silverlight or Flash so it works like Youtube?
It is the fact that you can embed a video into a webpage and have it play almost instantly. Prior to that, video on the internet sucked. You'd have to download Real because some jerk offered only a feed in Real Video. Other jerks would only offer it in Windows Media. Some would offer both and do so in like 3 different bitrates. Then came Youtube and suddenly you just clicked "Play" and things work.
That this uses Flash is only secondary. If Ogg or any other format can embed itself into your webpage and work as easy as a youtube video, it will catch on. No way should we revert to the days of "Click here for Real, Click here for WMV, Click here for OGG, Click here for MOV".
I'll bet you that they outsource the streaming stuff. Only a fool would run their own media distribution system, open or closed, on their own. Traffic patterns like this are exactly what EC2 was meant for.
Even if they in-sourced it, licensing costs are typically spit in the bucket compared to other costs. When a server costs at least $6000, a $1000 server license isn't much (and you might be able to use the Web Server edition for $500). And of course, that is even chump change compared to employee time.
Because if you made it the only format, it might not be one that can embed in the webpage ala youtube. A secondary stream would let not only your FreeBSD box get in on the party, it would let my windows-based SageTV get in the party as well.
Your solution would still piss off the die-hard open source people. You 100% sure mp4 is open as in RMS/FSF open? I bet it has some patents on it that would still warrant at least a couple troll-stories on the front page of Slashdot.
Assuming you would be paid $40/hr (thus about $75 including overhead), that is about 133 hours of work. Even a conservative 150 hours, that is about a month to create, test and integrate a system that works as easy as youtube without using Silverlight or Flash. Keep in mind if the backend doesn't support your solution (like the website is centered on ASP.NET), you might wind up building the whole thing from scratch too.
Remember the requirement is to make it embed and if you are forced to use Flash or Silverlight, offer a secondary stream.
It's just that he... got money from microsoft.
You keep saying this, but I've yet to see any proof. You do realize that if you are using the FEC as proof, any donor has to disclose their employeer, right? The FEC then lumps all the employees who donated from an employer into a single number. Given how many people work for Microsoft, and how many of them live here in "ultra-liberal" Washington State, I wouldn't be surprised to see a spike in donations from Microsoft employees. I'd expect the same from Google too.
Sorry to inform you, but your definition of "open" isn't in line with the RMS/FSF party line. Pretty much MPEG* has all kinds of patents that would exclude it from use. Theora and Vorbis are the only video/audio codecs that would most likely pass the RMS/FSF smell test.
You still need a way to either offer a second stream or embed the Vorbis/Theora stream into a browser. And you would have to require Windows and most likely Mac users to install both codecs.
thanks for that. A lot of the upload controls do tricks with the backend server to get a working progress bar (hence they are tied to a language or platform). The one you linked to just does a traditional file upload so the backend is non the wiser.
Silverlight runs on Intel Mac's (PPC's are legacy... if you have a problem with that go talk to Apple, not Microsoft. Apple is notorious for pulling stuff like that).
It doesn't run on Linux or FreeBSD (does Flash run on FreeBSD? Never tried, actually).
The solution, provided you are willing to bear the cost (i.e. taxes) would be to offer the stream in a secondary format. Keep in mind though, you dont know what backend they are using, so it could either be easy to have two video streams, or it could be a major pain in the ass. Personally, I'd say they should do it. I can't stream Silverlight or Flash to my SageTV if it is embedded.
Since the [canvas] tag is a ways off, and so is anything else, maybe somebody should invent a new [link] tag like [link rel='streaming' codec='h.264' src='http://place'] so things like SageTV, MythTV and whatever can suck down the media without trying to embed a flash player or silverlight player. As long as the codec is widely supported, it would be really nice. The only trick is to figure out ways to splice in the 15-second ads into such things like you can do with the Flash/Silverlight players. I bet the backend can do that though.
Are you willing to pay higher taxes to offer streaming in several formats? If yes, please go lobby the administration. If no, then would you rather they not offer any kind of user-friendly way to stream video? I would say "make it like youtube" is a critical requirement for the website.
Can you suggest a non-proprietary way to stream video ala-youtube on a web page? If no, then are you willing to spend your spare time to create a non-proprietary (defined however you wish) way to stream video content in a way that works on at least as many targets as Flash or Silverlight?
Flash shouldn't have been used either because Flash doesn't run on every OS as well. In effect, it too limits OS competition. Java has the same problem, so we can't use that either.
So if we can't use Flash, can't use Java, nor can we use Silverlight, what else could they have used to produce the same in-browser video player? Should we not offer a user-friendly embedded video player? If so, is would offering something less user-friendly be as open?
They've excluded me from the most open inauguration in history as well. As a lynx user, they haven't trascoded into a codec I can use, like streaming ASCII art.
Sarah Palin would have fixed that. I bet all her moose hunting videos are available as streaming ASCII art. Plus she can see ASCII-Russia (or RSCII-Russia, really) from her house. Ron Paul would have been better too, he'd have just given us all free Gold Bullion.
I'm curious what they should be using beside Silverlight? Flash is just as "non-free" as Silverlight, isn't it? Keep in mind a requirement has to be "embeds in the web-page, runs on a good chunk of browsers, and works like youtube".
Having some kind of text-link that you click on to open up a non-embeded browser doesn't cut it (which is what CSPAN does). Most people get confused by that stuff. Whatever your alternative is, bottom line is it has to work like youtube.
A wise person would note that I'm asking for a trade off here. Being "open" means more then just the FSF definition. "Open" means anybody can not just get to your content, but can do so in a way that is easy. Thus, "Open" and "Easy to use" go pretty much hand in hand. You can't be open to all people if your website is shitty and hard to use. And you can have a easy to use website that doesn't have any useful content (thus not being open).
Since the website has to be easy to use to be "open", you need to make sure your video can stream in a way most users are familiar with. And that means "make it work like youtube". You will find that it is just all but impossible to make a "youtube" without Flash or Silverlight.
Life is full of tradeoffs. You may now commence moderating me into the floor for being a "M$" shill or whatever...
Mod me down if you must, but what, pray tell, is anticompetitive about Silverlight? How does it block competition? If anything, it is anti-anti-competitive in that it forces Adobe to improve.
More important, and more pro-competition is that it forces the luddites at the W3C to get their act together and produce something useful for once. For too long W3C has been able to produce crap because they assumed that developers had no choice but use HTML and CSS. Having two plugins that run on the majority of target browsers breaks that "monopoly" the W3C holds on developers. We now have a choice to develop complex, in-the-browser interfaces using something other then their standards.
For too long the W3C has held a monopoly over web developers. Hopefully Silverlight will light a fire in their ass because if it doesn't, the web will be stuck in the stone-age for quite some time to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Your state, via whatever initiative process is in place, will do the work for them. Every year, some new state initiative chips away at the drug war. Many now have medical marijuana laws. What is next?
All President Obama has to do is shut the hell up and let the states do his work. The minute he opens his big fat mouth about what the states are doing, even if in praise, the gig is up and it will become used as a "family values" wedge issue.
Most people, I believe, are okay with legalization. But they'll only admit in the voting booth when you give them an initiative to approve.
We know what the constitution, read literally, says. We just disagree what it actually *means*.
My interpretation? The constitution is the framework in which we have debates in this country. It defines *how* we deal things, not *what* those things we deal with should be.
There is nothing in the constitution about stem cell research, but the constitution will tell us the proper way to resolve the controversies brought forward by its advances. The constitution tells us the president cannot write a law that bans it, the congress writes said law and passes it to the president for approval. The constitution doesn't say "no stem cell research". Same with gay marriage. Same with giving blacks and women the right to vote. The constitution only provides us a process to follow, not the solution.
Removing "dont ask don't tell" and changing it to "tell, who cares". Obama is pro-gay, but he isn't beholden to just the gay community either. He is beholden to every citizen in the country, regardless if they voted for him. If he picked some openly gay pastor, you'd be happy but Obama would have pissed off another segment of our country.
But seriously, I might not agree with Mr. Warren's views and I might not be of the same faith as he, but you have to admit he gave a hell of a prayer.
Never thought about the recounts and stuff. I guess there has to be a minimum lag between election and inauguration.
I'm positive there are those "countdown until the end of the Bush Era" javascripts, java apps, billboards, phone apps, whatever. What happens when those counters hit zero? How many easter eggs you think are buried in those countdown programs?
Will this be like a mini-Y2K where planes fall from the sky because their bush-countdown clock used an unsigned int and crashed?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Did you eat toast this morning? Was it burnt? Did your cat ignore you like he always does? Nobody loving you? Is your nails painted black like the sun?
Come on man, this is the internet. You are getting peoples hopes up with this happy talk.
Obviously any attempt to move the date would also move the election. If anything, I'd say the 3 month gap between election and inauguration is proving to long.
This whole two year long election season has proven one thing to me--the system is showing its age and needs to be revised to meet the needs of our quick-fix, one-hour photo, instant-oatmeal society. Make the primary season shorter, remove the gap between the conventions and the general election, move the general election to the spring and give a month and a half for a transition instead of three.
Of course, there is a heck of a lot of inertia behind the system as-is, and I don't see any politician burning their political capital getting it improved.
We should move the whole election / inauguration business so that our* president gets sworn in during summer and at a time when people aren't at work. Seriously, he will be sworn in at 9am pacific time on a Tuesday. If it was me, we'd all vote for president in May and swear the person in at 6pm eastern (9pm pacific) in mid-June.
Any reason for this being in January besides aligning with the new year?
* apologies to those not in the united states.
So I have an open source project for silverlight and post on the silverlight forums. Paranoid just a bit? Get a life dude. What have you done for open source?
Nice you guys seem to leave that part out.
Look, you choose to use an operating system built by essentially hobbyists in their spare time. Not everything is gonna work--that is a feature not a bug. And while I hate to say it, if you dont like that, perhaps you could dedicate some of your time to Moonlight so that you *can* use Silverlight stuff. Don't expect people to use their non-free time to develop software for a free operating system.
And yes, I do contribute to the free operating system I use in production environments--FreeBSD. I've contributed many ports to build and install CPAN modules. If something isn't in the ports tree and I need it, I don't just expect somebody else to put it there nor do I bitch, moan or cry--I take the time out of my day and write the damn port myself. That is how open source works--you give back to it and everybody benefits. If I didn't give back, I'd be a leech. That is also one of the biggest flaws in open source, you have to have the skills *to* give back, and not everybody does.
Silverlight exists, it is an amazing platform, and soon enough it will become widely adopted. Accept it as fact, and either either get used to being left out or get started working on Moonlight or something like it. Calling me a "Microsoft fanboy douche" will not result in the open source faeries giving you Silverlight support. You have to make it work!
Getting shit to work is what Linux is all about (or at least was all about). Back in the day, your only reward was the pride you got by getting $IMPOSSIBLE_DEVICE to work on Linux! Now I guess Linux is all about the politics of getting something for nothing. Sad. ...Now get the hell off my lawn!
If you toss out the concern over "safe patents", then by definition Moonlight is a safe alternative. It, and it's native AV codecs have probably as many patents as MPEG* and is probably just as safe. Why not spend your time working on getting Moonlight up to Silverlight 2? I mean hell, ffmpeg can handle Silverlight 2 codecs if compiled right, so I'd say it is a safe bet!
If you want to make this Stallman/FSFApproved Open-Source(tm) Free-Software(tm), then you can't just toss out the "patents are okay if I think they are safe". Thus you are stuck with Vorbis/Theora, and even then you might not get the Stallman Seal of Approval as Theora is based on VP3, which has a patent on it. Regardless of certification, neither have a way to be embedded Youtube style in a webpage.
PS: If it isn't Stallman/FSF Approved Open-Source(tm) Free-Software(tm), then I promise you that it will be a Slashdot story with just as many comments bitching about "Obama is not Open". Thus you *have no choice* but to use Vorbis/Theora, and I am only assuming that is Stallman Approved(tm). Dont like it? Welcome to open source politics.
If you ask any prominent republican, they'll tell you one of the big mistakes their party made this election was to only complain and never offer solutions. They admit that nobody likes it when a party does nothing but point out flaws in the other guy' solution, but never comes up with a plan of their own to fix it.
Dont make the same mistake as the republicans! If you are going to poke a million holes in the other guy and not come up with your own fix, you offer nothing to the conversation.
How do you embed video on a webpage without Silverlight or Flash so it works like Youtube?
It is the fact that you can embed a video into a webpage and have it play almost instantly. Prior to that, video on the internet sucked. You'd have to download Real because some jerk offered only a feed in Real Video. Other jerks would only offer it in Windows Media. Some would offer both and do so in like 3 different bitrates. Then came Youtube and suddenly you just clicked "Play" and things work.
That this uses Flash is only secondary. If Ogg or any other format can embed itself into your webpage and work as easy as a youtube video, it will catch on. No way should we revert to the days of "Click here for Real, Click here for WMV, Click here for OGG, Click here for MOV".
I'll bet you that they outsource the streaming stuff. Only a fool would run their own media distribution system, open or closed, on their own. Traffic patterns like this are exactly what EC2 was meant for.
Even if they in-sourced it, licensing costs are typically spit in the bucket compared to other costs. When a server costs at least $6000, a $1000 server license isn't much (and you might be able to use the Web Server edition for $500). And of course, that is even chump change compared to employee time.
Because if you made it the only format, it might not be one that can embed in the webpage ala youtube. A secondary stream would let not only your FreeBSD box get in on the party, it would let my windows-based SageTV get in the party as well.
Your solution would still piss off the die-hard open source people. You 100% sure mp4 is open as in RMS/FSF open? I bet it has some patents on it that would still warrant at least a couple troll-stories on the front page of Slashdot.
You are wrong. Windows Media Server is licensed per server, not per client. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/server/version.aspx
Assuming you would be paid $40/hr (thus about $75 including overhead), that is about 133 hours of work. Even a conservative 150 hours, that is about a month to create, test and integrate a system that works as easy as youtube without using Silverlight or Flash. Keep in mind if the backend doesn't support your solution (like the website is centered on ASP.NET), you might wind up building the whole thing from scratch too.
Remember the requirement is to make it embed and if you are forced to use Flash or Silverlight, offer a secondary stream.
You keep saying this, but I've yet to see any proof. You do realize that if you are using the FEC as proof, any donor has to disclose their employeer, right? The FEC then lumps all the employees who donated from an employer into a single number. Given how many people work for Microsoft, and how many of them live here in "ultra-liberal" Washington State, I wouldn't be surprised to see a spike in donations from Microsoft employees. I'd expect the same from Google too.
Sorry to inform you, but your definition of "open" isn't in line with the RMS/FSF party line. Pretty much MPEG* has all kinds of patents that would exclude it from use. Theora and Vorbis are the only video/audio codecs that would most likely pass the RMS/FSF smell test.
You still need a way to either offer a second stream or embed the Vorbis/Theora stream into a browser. And you would have to require Windows and most likely Mac users to install both codecs.
thanks for that. A lot of the upload controls do tricks with the backend server to get a working progress bar (hence they are tied to a language or platform). The one you linked to just does a traditional file upload so the backend is non the wiser.
Silverlight runs on Intel Mac's (PPC's are legacy... if you have a problem with that go talk to Apple, not Microsoft. Apple is notorious for pulling stuff like that).
It doesn't run on Linux or FreeBSD (does Flash run on FreeBSD? Never tried, actually).
The solution, provided you are willing to bear the cost (i.e. taxes) would be to offer the stream in a secondary format. Keep in mind though, you dont know what backend they are using, so it could either be easy to have two video streams, or it could be a major pain in the ass. Personally, I'd say they should do it. I can't stream Silverlight or Flash to my SageTV if it is embedded.
Since the [canvas] tag is a ways off, and so is anything else, maybe somebody should invent a new [link] tag like [link rel='streaming' codec='h.264' src='http://place'] so things like SageTV, MythTV and whatever can suck down the media without trying to embed a flash player or silverlight player. As long as the codec is widely supported, it would be really nice. The only trick is to figure out ways to splice in the 15-second ads into such things like you can do with the Flash/Silverlight players. I bet the backend can do that though.
Are you willing to pay higher taxes to offer streaming in several formats? If yes, please go lobby the administration. If no, then would you rather they not offer any kind of user-friendly way to stream video? I would say "make it like youtube" is a critical requirement for the website.
Can you suggest a non-proprietary way to stream video ala-youtube on a web page? If no, then are you willing to spend your spare time to create a non-proprietary (defined however you wish) way to stream video content in a way that works on at least as many targets as Flash or Silverlight?
Flash shouldn't have been used either because Flash doesn't run on every OS as well. In effect, it too limits OS competition. Java has the same problem, so we can't use that either.
So if we can't use Flash, can't use Java, nor can we use Silverlight, what else could they have used to produce the same in-browser video player? Should we not offer a user-friendly embedded video player? If so, is would offering something less user-friendly be as open?
They've excluded me from the most open inauguration in history as well. As a lynx user, they haven't trascoded into a codec I can use, like streaming ASCII art.
Sarah Palin would have fixed that. I bet all her moose hunting videos are available as streaming ASCII art. Plus she can see ASCII-Russia (or RSCII-Russia, really) from her house. Ron Paul would have been better too, he'd have just given us all free Gold Bullion.
I'm curious what they should be using beside Silverlight? Flash is just as "non-free" as Silverlight, isn't it? Keep in mind a requirement has to be "embeds in the web-page, runs on a good chunk of browsers, and works like youtube".
Having some kind of text-link that you click on to open up a non-embeded browser doesn't cut it (which is what CSPAN does). Most people get confused by that stuff. Whatever your alternative is, bottom line is it has to work like youtube.
A wise person would note that I'm asking for a trade off here. Being "open" means more then just the FSF definition. "Open" means anybody can not just get to your content, but can do so in a way that is easy. Thus, "Open" and "Easy to use" go pretty much hand in hand. You can't be open to all people if your website is shitty and hard to use. And you can have a easy to use website that doesn't have any useful content (thus not being open).
Since the website has to be easy to use to be "open", you need to make sure your video can stream in a way most users are familiar with. And that means "make it work like youtube". You will find that it is just all but impossible to make a "youtube" without Flash or Silverlight.
Life is full of tradeoffs. You may now commence moderating me into the floor for being a "M$" shill or whatever...
Mod me down if you must, but what, pray tell, is anticompetitive about Silverlight? How does it block competition? If anything, it is anti-anti-competitive in that it forces Adobe to improve.
More important, and more pro-competition is that it forces the luddites at the W3C to get their act together and produce something useful for once. For too long W3C has been able to produce crap because they assumed that developers had no choice but use HTML and CSS. Having two plugins that run on the majority of target browsers breaks that "monopoly" the W3C holds on developers. We now have a choice to develop complex, in-the-browser interfaces using something other then their standards.
For too long the W3C has held a monopoly over web developers. Hopefully Silverlight will light a fire in their ass because if it doesn't, the web will be stuck in the stone-age for quite some time to come.