I was beginning to wonder - so the RFC says that HTTP(S) is an EXCEPTION to the RFC-Standard
proto://(user):(password)@(host):(port)/(url)
scheme?
Personally, I've gotten used to "fish://(user):(password)@(host)" and "webdav://(user):(password)@(host)" and "ftp://(user):(password)@(host)" and so on...It'd annoy me to have it removed. I suppose just removing it from http(s) wouldn't be TOO bad...
With Oracle, we'll just call Oracle and have them foot the bill for damage done.
Did the lawyers at Oracle forget to include the usual "we do not warrant this software for any particular purpose and in any case the maximum we will be liable for is the cost of the software" clause in the End User License Agreement, which every other piece of proprietary software seems to have, for their permission-to-use-our-server-software license?
I'm still ITCHING (insert obligatory snide 'unwashed geek' comment here) to see OpenMosix ported to 2.6.x at least, and I'd love to see it built into the next kernel series.
I haven't gotten to play with it in a while, but long ago when I last did (this was even before the Mosix/OpenMosix split) I was pretty impressed with the results. Unfortunately I "need" 2.6 for certain device support that doesn't seem to work properly for me in 2.4, or I'd probably be playing with the "old" 2.4 series...
I believe that, supposedly, MS Blahblahblah97 and MS Blahblahblah2000 are effectively the same format. I would have sworn that I'd seen "MS Word 97/2000","MS Excel 97/2000" and so forth as options in some menus. (Even MS Office 2000 itself, perhaps?)
Granted that I wouldn't really be surprised if there WERE differences, but I hadn't heard that there were.
True, there is SOME. Looking at today's CVS checkout (wish they still had WebCVS frontend available) the last code update to the theora lib itself was a month-and-a-half ago, though (unless maybe there have been more recent updates in the 'example players and encoders for win32 only' section).
Well, in THAT respect, Ogg Theora support is(/was) ALREADY "ready" in, for example MPlayer. Does this mean, though, that Ogg Theora is finally ready to be supported? (This is a genuine hopeful question, not a snide rhetorical one...) Has Xiph ironed out the last of the incompatible changes they needed to make and are getting ready to release specifications?
I'm not TOO worried about the "behind the curve" issue - what I saw in Alpha1 and Alpha2 leads me to believe that the final result will be very good...if there ever IS a final result, which is my one concern.
I USED MPlayer's Theora support while testing Alpha 2, and it does work...but since Alpha 2 was released, there've been (incompatible but justifiable) changes to the CVS sources. (The previous poster is right - there IS, or at least was, still SOME development going on very quietly in the background since last June...at least as recent as 3 months ago, according to the last 'Ogg Traffic').
Meanwhile I keep hearing that the Ogg file format (not the codecs) is horrible and nobody is that interested in working with it, but on the other hand I THINK that in most cases what's being discussed is the 'hacked together' unofficial ".ogm" format that got put together by impatient people tired of waiting for official specifications to come out of xiph.org. I'm hoping that Xiph someday gets official specifications openly published ('quietly checking some docs into CVS' doesn't quite seem to interest developers outside of Xiph...) soon. Meanwhile, all development appears to remain semi-secret (the developers don't even show up on the Theora development mailing list very often, and then usually only to answer some 3rd party's questions rather than discussing current development.) and Ogg Theora is, what, over a year behind the original schedule now? www.theora.org hasn't been updated in over half a year, either...
I know, I know, every time Theora comes up I whine about this. Can't help it - what's there really IS very promising, it's just frustrating to see the development being kept 'hidden' and mostly dormant the whole time and no indication that anybody is really doing much with it. (I think I will try checking out current Theora CVS and MPlayer and see if MPlayer's Theora support still compiles or if the last CVS updates broke that...)
Personally, I wish they would have just released a Unix VP3.2 encoder/player, instead of wasting a lot of time on trivial improvements. Windows users can use the VP3.2 Quicktime plugin (along with a quicktime Vorbis Plugin) and create patent-free movies[...]
Well, THAT I'm not certain about - I've heard it said that Apple holds patents on the Quicktime file format itself. (Plus, I heard more than one developer comment that QuickTime(tm) is a real pain to work with. My impression is that Quicktime is to Multimedia File Formats what Emacs is to 'text editors'...).
I'd go so far as to say that what little development news has been coming out seems to imply that most of the work is really being done on the Ogg file format rather than the Theora codec (that is, adjusting the Ogg format specifications to finally deal with more than just Vorbis streams), and related minor changes to the Theora codec specifications to fit with it. The "encoding video" parts of Theora SEEM like they're really pretty much done, though not yet optimized. Or in short, it SEEMS (from the nearly non-existent trickle of news) that all that's really left is little 'tweaks' and publishing real specifications, and the rest is just optimization, but it SEEMS (again, maybe entirely due to the "secrecy" of the development) as though nobody's bothering with even that little bit...
(I suspect if SOMEONE would start putting out regular, readily available news - even if just a simple paragraph once each week, even saying nothing more than "the developers were too busy this week to do anything, but hope to be checking in more Theora updates in the next couple of weeks" or something of the sort - would go a long way towards keeping interest in the project from dying completely and/or giving the impression that 'outsiders' are not welcome...)
I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....
I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
It's possible to replace the windows 'shell' program, I believe (wasn't there an article on this in the most recent issue of 2600? [see, it's not ALL "how to crack security at $MAJOR_RETAILER"...]). Evidently, there's even a version of the BlackBox window manager for Windows.
Wonder how hard it would be to set up QT for windows and set up a subset of KDE as the replacement shell...
Download the free RealPlayer 10 Beta here, with no re-direction or sales tricks:
http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=slashdot
Really? The "Linux/Unix" link on that page appears to only offer Realplayer 8, or "RealOne for unix, preview release", not RealPlayer 10, at least, not anywhere obvious that I can see.
Presumably, I have to go to the Helix page, and go through some procedure to obtain the proprietary codecs separately? After registering my email address. WHich like too many sites doesn't allow the "+" tag that I like to use to help control spam inflow without having to completely change accounts every time one ends up getting sold or harvested...
Kinda dissapointing. Is the Realplayer 10 Beta for Linux available elsewhere? I assume it is...
Wasn't Darl due to get some sort of huge bonus if he managed to drag out 4 consecutive quarters of 'profit'?
Now he won't get it! Poor guy. He COULD have collected his winnings and quietly departed, but NO, now he's going to have to drag this thing out for at LEAST 4 more quarters in hopes of getting that bonus...
I suspect the main reason for this is the gigantic size of the US.
Fundamentally, I suspect that the amount of authority that a government can have over its subjects and not end up being oppressive is inversely proportional to the size of the governed population.
A country the size of, say, France (one step down in economic power from the STATE of California, last I heard) can get away with being fairly socialistic. The entire nation of the US attempting to do so would turn into the Soviet Union...
Now, if Europe REALLY wanted the problem solved, perhaps they'd be encouraging the states that make up the US to secede and form a number of smaller, independent nations much as they have in Europe. Said states could possibly become rather "less right-wing" without resulting in a grossly oppressive and ponderous central government...
Personally, I'm thinking one of Darl's Bodyguards(tm) had to throw himself in front of Darl to protect him from a hail of invisible bullets, and fell on one of their servers in the process...
I'll second this option - it's gotten possible to get a decent laptop rather inexpensively. I'll throw in a blatant plug for the Averatec 3150H that I just picked up for similar reasons. $900 new, and every single component appears to have viable working linux drivers as well (including even the software modem, which Smartlink makes and offers the driver source - though it's not GPL). My only complaint is that the obnoxious "restore disk" is the only copy you get of the software that it comes with, and the disk completely re-images your drive if you use it.
I ended up using the ntfsutils program to shrink the windows partition, and then making an image with dd of the section of the drive including the partition table and Windows(tm) section (I HAVE normal install disks for the Linux portion...).
I find myself regularly having to travel and still be able to be in contact with the main office to do support, which I think would be a serious pain to try to do on a telephone or with a PDA. On the other hand, a phone or PDA is substantially cheaper...
I would hesitate to vote for a candidate who was spending time tweaking httpd.conf.
I, on the other hand, would GLADLY vote for such a candidate - more time spent tweaking configuration files = LESS time spent screwing around with the country (which, regardless of who's in office, seems to always cause more problems than it solves.)
"Not doing anything" has got to be one of the most useful things for a political officer to learn how to do...
[...] if Linux was the prevalent OS, would you still make the arguement that people should diversify away from Linux to improve security?
I don't know about anyone else, but I know I would. I think networks should include both OS's, Linux and Mac OSX. I'd say BSD, too, but I heard it's dying...
From the article: Also of note was the volume of OpenSource software in the box - OpenSSL/SSH, Apache, Samba, CUPS, Gimp-print, bash... you name it.
Isn't most or all of that released as GPL? The "invalid" license? Does SCO intend to claim that the GPL's alleged invalidity means the software is "license-free" and therefore they can do whatever they want with it? Perhaps they assume that nobody associated with free software can afford to sue them for copyright infringement...
My own "review" of mplayer/mencoder
on
Mplayer Revisited
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In short form...
Pros:
Probably supports more formats and codecs than just about any other project (on just about any other platform). Though typing "mplayer/dev/random" and having it show me "Return of the King" doesn't QUITE work yet...
Has a HUGE array of features
configure script for compilation is surprisingly 'smart' about picking options for optimal operation
LOTS of documentation online
error messages are often quite informative. (I've gotten used to terse "Unable to Conflugalize the Blurglemeister. Aborting." messages, where MPlayer tends to instead say things like "Could not Conflugalize the Blurglemeister. This could be due to too slow of a CPU or insufficient memory. Try again with -no-conflugalize or -framedrop")
huge range of potential uses, beyond 'playing videos' (exporting to external encoders, rendering subtitles, postprocessing video, correcting framerates, etc. etc.)
Sometimes hard to figure out which option to use for a specific process
a few holes in the documentation (e.g. details of what some of the postprocessing filters do and what the parameters for them mean, exactly)
Mencoder only supports.avi output (or.mpg, but this is experimental)
Can't 'directly' create (S)VCD-compliant video at this time (but there are scripts for doing so using mplayer and mpeg2enc/mp2enc)
Some options are inconsistent between mencoder and mplayer (e.g. -ofps ["adjust the framerate by copying or dropping frames"] exists in mencoder but not mplayer)
Maybe a Pro, maybe a Con:
It has a GUI, but the GUI is something of an 'afterthought'. (The fact that a GUI exists is probably part of the reason so many people assume mplayer is intended to be a 'general user' program. MPlayer might be better off not even having one. On the other hand, choice is good.)
Can use Windows codecs for many formats that aren't 'natively' supported (complicates distribution issues and only works on i386 platforms, but at least provides a 'fallback' method for viewing some otherwise-unviewable files)
Is NOT a project focussed on 'end-user' applications. (From my perspective, this is why it has so much functionality - the developers 'waste' little time "making it look pretty" or "so simple even an idiot can use it", but it gets them subjected to a lot of abuse from people who resent those lacks. I worry that the abuse will discourage developers from doing anything...)
So many features it's hard to tell sometimes what you can and can't do with it...
I find it interesting, incidentally, that MPlayer supports Ogg Theora better than XIPH does at the moment, in my opinion....(mplayer actually does play back Ogg Theora files generated by the Theora CVS quite nicely. Now if only Xiph would ever work on Ogg Theora and the Ogg specification again...)
Not sure why this got marked 'troll' - the poster has a point.
Okay, maybe the way it was said was 'insensitive', but still...
Joe Barr's article really DOES boil down, roughly, to "yup, MPlayer sure does handle a wide variety of file formats, but the developers are poopyheads for not being user-friendly and having a nice GUI and for making me compile from sources, and they're mean to me."
I have to admit, I'd be pretty irritated too if, after all the work to make the./configure script as "smart" and automated as it is, someone came along and complained that they had to click more than once to do the install...especially when so many of those people pop onto the mailing list and start making demands contrary to the goals of the project. ("you MUST make a better GUI","You'll NEVER be the most popular player if you don't change [whatever].", etc.)
(Why use MPlayer if it's too hard to install? Xine is a fine project, and unlike MPlayer which is designed for 'power users' rather than 'end users', Xine's goals are explicitly aligned with making things easy for end-users....)
Wait, you write CGI scripts in C, and this is driving you insane? I'd say you're already there!:-)
Seriously, though. Yup, I have to agree, there ARE a lot of annoying quirks and inconsistencies in the parameters, and I, too, find myself re-trying things to figure out how to get them to work...but I CAN get them to work, which is the point (as far as I have been able to tell, there just isn't a project out there that has the same bewildering range of functionality that MPlayer does. Well, not in the 'media player' category anyway.)
I think of MPlayer/mencoder as sort of the "vi" of media players - the command syntax isn't necessarily intuitive, and a lot of people hate it, but it packs a surprising amount of functionality into its minimalist interface...(disclaimer - I say this as someone who barely knows how to use vi, so this analogy may be completely broken...)
'course, while we're on the subject of "pet Mplayer peeves", mine is features that exist in either one or the other of mplayer or mencoder, but not both. -endpos and -ofps would be really handy when using mplayer to export video to an external encoder (such as mpeg2enc - though this may soon be unnecessary if (S)VCD/DVD-compatible mpeg files become generate-able from mencoder soon)...
Slashdot Mirror
I was beginning to wonder - so the RFC says that HTTP(S) is an EXCEPTION to the RFC-Standard
proto://(user):(password)@(host):(port)/(url)
scheme?
Personally, I've gotten used to "fish://(user):(password)@(host)" and "webdav://(user):(password)@(host)" and "ftp://(user):(password)@(host)" and so on...It'd annoy me to have it removed. I suppose just removing it from http(s) wouldn't be TOO bad...
Did the lawyers at Oracle forget to include the usual "we do not warrant this software for any particular purpose and in any case the maximum we will be liable for is the cost of the software" clause in the End User License Agreement, which every other piece of proprietary software seems to have, for their permission-to-use-our-server-software license?
I'm still ITCHING (insert obligatory snide 'unwashed geek' comment here) to see OpenMosix ported to 2.6.x at least, and I'd love to see it built into the next kernel series.
I haven't gotten to play with it in a while, but long ago when I last did (this was even before the Mosix/OpenMosix split) I was pretty impressed with the results. Unfortunately I "need" 2.6 for certain device support that doesn't seem to work properly for me in 2.4, or I'd probably be playing with the "old" 2.4 series...
I believe that, supposedly, MS Blahblahblah97 and MS Blahblahblah2000 are effectively the same format. I would have sworn that I'd seen "MS Word 97/2000","MS Excel 97/2000" and so forth as options in some menus. (Even MS Office 2000 itself, perhaps?)
Granted that I wouldn't really be surprised if there WERE differences, but I hadn't heard that there were.
If that's always true, why is fraud a crime?
True, there is SOME. Looking at today's CVS checkout (wish they still had WebCVS frontend available) the last code update to the theora lib itself was a month-and-a-half ago, though (unless maybe there have been more recent updates in the 'example players and encoders for win32 only' section).
Well, in THAT respect, Ogg Theora support is(/was) ALREADY "ready" in, for example MPlayer. Does this mean, though, that Ogg Theora is finally ready to be supported? (This is a genuine hopeful question, not a snide rhetorical one...) Has Xiph ironed out the last of the incompatible changes they needed to make and are getting ready to release specifications?
I'm not TOO worried about the "behind the curve" issue - what I saw in Alpha1 and Alpha2 leads me to believe that the final result will be very good...if there ever IS a final result, which is my one concern.
I USED MPlayer's Theora support while testing Alpha 2, and it does work...but since Alpha 2 was released, there've been (incompatible but justifiable) changes to the CVS sources. (The previous poster is right - there IS, or at least was, still SOME development going on very quietly in the background since last June...at least as recent as 3 months ago, according to the last 'Ogg Traffic').
Meanwhile I keep hearing that the Ogg file format (not the codecs) is horrible and nobody is that interested in working with it, but on the other hand I THINK that in most cases what's being discussed is the 'hacked together' unofficial ".ogm" format that got put together by impatient people tired of waiting for official specifications to come out of xiph.org. I'm hoping that Xiph someday gets official specifications openly published ('quietly checking some docs into CVS' doesn't quite seem to interest developers outside of Xiph...) soon. Meanwhile, all development appears to remain semi-secret (the developers don't even show up on the Theora development mailing list very often, and then usually only to answer some 3rd party's questions rather than discussing current development.) and Ogg Theora is, what, over a year behind the original schedule now? www.theora.org hasn't been updated in over half a year, either...
I know, I know, every time Theora comes up I whine about this. Can't help it - what's there really IS very promising, it's just frustrating to see the development being kept 'hidden' and mostly dormant the whole time and no indication that anybody is really doing much with it. (I think I will try checking out current Theora CVS and MPlayer and see if MPlayer's Theora support still compiles or if the last CVS updates broke that...)
Personally, I wish they would have just released a Unix VP3.2 encoder/player, instead of wasting a lot of time on trivial improvements. Windows users can use the VP3.2 Quicktime plugin (along with a quicktime Vorbis Plugin) and create patent-free movies[...]Well, THAT I'm not certain about - I've heard it said that Apple holds patents on the Quicktime file format itself. (Plus, I heard more than one developer comment that QuickTime(tm) is a real pain to work with. My impression is that Quicktime is to Multimedia File Formats what Emacs is to 'text editors'...).
I'd go so far as to say that what little development news has been coming out seems to imply that most of the work is really being done on the Ogg file format rather than the Theora codec (that is, adjusting the Ogg format specifications to finally deal with more than just Vorbis streams), and related minor changes to the Theora codec specifications to fit with it. The "encoding video" parts of Theora SEEM like they're really pretty much done, though not yet optimized. Or in short, it SEEMS (from the nearly non-existent trickle of news) that all that's really left is little 'tweaks' and publishing real specifications, and the rest is just optimization, but it SEEMS (again, maybe entirely due to the "secrecy" of the development) as though nobody's bothering with even that little bit...
(I suspect if SOMEONE would start putting out regular, readily available news - even if just a simple paragraph once each week, even saying nothing more than "the developers were too busy this week to do anything, but hope to be checking in more Theora updates in the next couple of weeks" or something of the sort - would go a long way towards keeping interest in the project from dying completely and/or giving the impression that 'outsiders' are not welcome...)
Okay, enough whining from me for now...
I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....
I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
Hmmmm....
It's possible to replace the windows 'shell' program, I believe (wasn't there an article on this in the most recent issue of 2600? [see, it's not ALL "how to crack security at $MAJOR_RETAILER"...]). Evidently, there's even a version of the BlackBox window manager for Windows.
Wonder how hard it would be to set up QT for windows and set up a subset of KDE as the replacement shell...
Really? The "Linux/Unix" link on that page appears to only offer Realplayer 8, or "RealOne for unix, preview release", not RealPlayer 10, at least, not anywhere obvious that I can see.
Presumably, I have to go to the Helix page, and go through some procedure to obtain the proprietary codecs separately? After registering my email address. WHich like too many sites doesn't allow the "+" tag that I like to use to help control spam inflow without having to completely change accounts every time one ends up getting sold or harvested...
Kinda dissapointing. Is the Realplayer 10 Beta for Linux available elsewhere? I assume it is...
Wasn't Darl due to get some sort of huge bonus if he managed to drag out 4 consecutive quarters of 'profit'?
Now he won't get it! Poor guy. He COULD have collected his winnings and quietly departed, but NO, now he's going to have to drag this thing out for at LEAST 4 more quarters in hopes of getting that bonus...
I suspect the main reason for this is the gigantic size of the US.
Fundamentally, I suspect that the amount of authority that a government can have over its subjects and not end up being oppressive is inversely proportional to the size of the governed population.
A country the size of, say, France (one step down in economic power from the STATE of California, last I heard) can get away with being fairly socialistic. The entire nation of the US attempting to do so would turn into the Soviet Union...
Now, if Europe REALLY wanted the problem solved, perhaps they'd be encouraging the states that make up the US to secede and form a number of smaller, independent nations much as they have in Europe. Said states could possibly become rather "less right-wing" without resulting in a grossly oppressive and ponderous central government...
Just a theory I have.
Personally, I'm thinking one of Darl's Bodyguards(tm) had to throw himself in front of Darl to protect him from a hail of invisible bullets, and fell on one of their servers in the process...
That's what the TORCHES are for...
I'll second this option - it's gotten possible to get a decent laptop rather inexpensively. I'll throw in a blatant plug for the Averatec 3150H that I just picked up for similar reasons. $900 new, and every single component appears to have viable working linux drivers as well (including even the software modem, which Smartlink makes and offers the driver source - though it's not GPL). My only complaint is that the obnoxious "restore disk" is the only copy you get of the software that it comes with, and the disk completely re-images your drive if you use it.
I ended up using the ntfsutils program to shrink the windows partition, and then making an image with dd of the section of the drive including the partition table and Windows(tm) section (I HAVE normal install disks for the Linux portion...).
I find myself regularly having to travel and still be able to be in contact with the main office to do support, which I think would be a serious pain to try to do on a telephone or with a PDA. On the other hand, a phone or PDA is substantially cheaper...
What, you mean he talks like a robot? Doesn't that apply to pretty much ALL of the candidates?...
(Sorry, couldn't resist. I am filled with shame...)
I, on the other hand, would GLADLY vote for such a candidate - more time spent tweaking configuration files = LESS time spent screwing around with the country (which, regardless of who's in office, seems to always cause more problems than it solves.)
"Not doing anything" has got to be one of the most useful things for a political officer to learn how to do...
...why did they make it a menu option?...
(I'm having disturbing images of an MS Proprietary form of 'choose your own path' porno served by IE...)
I don't know about anyone else, but I know I would. I think networks should include both OS's, Linux and Mac OSX. I'd say BSD, too, but I heard it's dying...
Oh, good, it's not just me who's a raging anal-retentive about that sort of thing.
And don't get me started on loose/lose, either :-)
Also of note was the volume of OpenSource software in the box - OpenSSL/SSH, Apache, Samba, CUPS, Gimp-print, bash
Isn't most or all of that released as GPL? The "invalid" license? Does SCO intend to claim that the GPL's alleged invalidity means the software is "license-free" and therefore they can do whatever they want with it? Perhaps they assume that nobody associated with free software can afford to sue them for copyright infringement...
In short form...
Pros:
Cons:
Maybe a Pro, maybe a Con:
I find it interesting, incidentally, that MPlayer supports Ogg Theora better than XIPH does at the moment, in my opinion....(mplayer actually does play back Ogg Theora files generated by the Theora CVS quite nicely. Now if only Xiph would ever work on Ogg Theora and the Ogg specification again...)
Not sure why this got marked 'troll' - the poster has a point.
Okay, maybe the way it was said was 'insensitive', but still...
Joe Barr's article really DOES boil down, roughly, to "yup, MPlayer sure does handle a wide variety of file formats, but the developers are poopyheads for not being user-friendly and having a nice GUI and for making me compile from sources, and they're mean to me."
I have to admit, I'd be pretty irritated too if, after all the work to make the ./configure script as "smart" and automated as it is, someone came along and complained that they had to click more than once to do the install...especially when so many of those people pop onto the mailing list and start making demands contrary to the goals of the project. ("you MUST make a better GUI","You'll NEVER be the most popular player if you don't change [whatever].", etc.)
(Why use MPlayer if it's too hard to install? Xine is a fine project, and unlike MPlayer which is designed for 'power users' rather than 'end users', Xine's goals are explicitly aligned with making things easy for end-users....)
Wait, you write CGI scripts in C, and this is driving you insane? I'd say you're already there! :-)
Seriously, though. Yup, I have to agree, there ARE a lot of annoying quirks and inconsistencies in the parameters, and I, too, find myself re-trying things to figure out how to get them to work...but I CAN get them to work, which is the point (as far as I have been able to tell, there just isn't a project out there that has the same bewildering range of functionality that MPlayer does. Well, not in the 'media player' category anyway.)
I think of MPlayer/mencoder as sort of the "vi" of media players - the command syntax isn't necessarily intuitive, and a lot of people hate it, but it packs a surprising amount of functionality into its minimalist interface...(disclaimer - I say this as someone who barely knows how to use vi, so this analogy may be completely broken...)
'course, while we're on the subject of "pet Mplayer peeves", mine is features that exist in either one or the other of mplayer or mencoder, but not both. -endpos and -ofps would be really handy when using mplayer to export video to an external encoder (such as mpeg2enc - though this may soon be unnecessary if (S)VCD/DVD-compatible mpeg files become generate-able from mencoder soon)...