Check out the CBC story about this scandal. HP claims that the Canadian government is actually a victim of fraud from someone in the DND. Given the other scandals in this government, I wouldn't be all that shocked.
Like the largest oil reserve in the world perhaps? Of course it is all stuck in some bloody tar sands in northern Alberta, making it a bitch to get at.
But really, if you buy an eMac with a Superdrive, it will come with iDVD. If iDVD actually is good enough for what these people need, it *might* be cheaper to buy the new machine than it is to buy the equivalent Windows software.
If you're needing the professional Apple tools to meet the requirements though (the * Pro tools), then a Windows or Linux professional software solution is certainly cheaper.
Yeah, I hate how all those distors have a different kernel. And all those different compilers are confusing.
Oh wait, there is only linux and gcc. Different versions sure, but that is no different from having Java 1.1, Java 1.4, etc.
The distributions tend to for the most part have all the same packages, and rarely do distro specific forks. So you always get linux-kernel, gcc, glibc, apache, bash, etc. I bet they'd all ship this new open source Java as well.
Setting up printing in any OS can really suck. Especially network printing. Windows tries to automatically give you the right driver, but if the SMB server has a different driver than what your version of Windows wants, good luck.
I've seen printer installations in Mandrake, Windows, and Mac OS that take a single click and they are done. But I've also seen the hair-pulling hours worth of work in each OS as well. And a few times where the point-and-click installs a printer for you, but your apps won't print for some unexplained reason. Printing sucks period - I haven't set up my home printer for years due to lack of need and desire to fuss with it.
In fact, the only time it doesn't suck where I work is when cups is working properly. I can install a new Linux distro and have cups+kprinter automatically pick up all of our networked printers. BTW, thank you KDE for Kprinter - it works with any linux app, not just KDE ones, and it is a great printer dialog!
I think CUPS has serious potential to fix the printing nightmare, but the distros are the ones that need to get some good front ends for it. Just because RedHat/Fedora's front end sucks compared to the Mandrake and Mac Os printer GUI, doesn't mean the underlying CUPS stuff is no good.
Yeah, it would be interesting if he knew about IBM's wishes in advance, and decided to publish an open letter to Sun before IBM does.
Then it looks like he got this whole ball rolling, and he can take credit for saving another company through open source (although open source didn't exactly save Netscape the company did it - though it did save Netscape the browser).
Of course all of the above is a devil's advocate sort of post. If ESR really were that much of a pain in the ass to companies promoting OSS, he wouldn't be left in charge of the OSI.
Well they already are doing the Linux and AMD64 thing now, even though the Open Sourcing of Java woud've done very little to hurt their profits, unlike a full takeover for Linux and x86 would.
It is kind of funny that one of the last major applications to migrate to GTK2.0 is the application that created GTK in the first place (hence GTK - GIMP ToolKit).
Although I guess it kind of makes sense since GTK and GIMP are pretty tightly integrated - it would be far from trivial to switch versions.
First off, freeze it real good. When I first tried this, I didn't get it cold enough, so it died again before I could get much data. I was lucky that my drive gave me multiple chances at it, as usually you only get one.
If freezing it doesn't get it working, drop it onto a hard flat surface. Sometimes this will free up whatever is stuck.
As a last resort, try banging on the drive while the computer is running. You might be lucky and get it spinning again.
If none of the above work, you can either void the warrenty by trying to swap parts with other drives (caution: drives that seem to be identical sometimes are not - match serial numbers and try to get one from the same batch if possible), or you can have him spend a lot of money in a data recovery warehouse. Depends how important the data is.
And I guess if he's willing to spend lots of money to get the data back, you may not want to beat the crap out of the drive to get it working again. If it is just going in the garbage anyways, then anything goes. Just try the freezing first, as it has the best chance of success (in my experience) and does the least damage.
Otherwise Windows XP will be pretty unbearable (if you can't manage to secure this power, check out the end of my comment for a nasty workaround). It is almost impossible to do anything you ned to do without being an Administrator on the system. At the very least, you'll need to be a "Power User".
If you are able to get some software installed, Cygwin is pretty nice to have. A real shell (bash) instead of command.com is nice, and the X server is very good as well. It can run in multiwindow/rootless mode as well, so X windows can be managed by Win Xp instead of having a seperate XFree86 window with its own window manager.
For both usability and security reasons, you need to get something other than IE as your browser. FireFox or the Mozilla suite would be the best.
There are plenty of other open source applications that have been ported to Windows as well, so whatever tools you used to might be available.
If you are unlucky enough to not even have installation privilages, you do have a few options. First off, as others have mentioned, PuTTY is free ssh client that does not need an installation. Heck, it will run fine if you just select "Open" instead of "Save" on the download, although you'll want a copy on disk if possible so that you can save profiles and such.
If you need graphical applications from Linux/Unix and can't get an X server or VNC client installed, you can resort to using VNC through a Java Applet. I can't image this would be a joy to use though.
As a last resort, you can make a custon Knoppix/Morphix CD that boots into XPde instead of KDE. Nobody around you is likely to notice the difference.
Yeah, and the BIOS guys claim to be working on a lightweight browser to put in the BIOS, hence why Mozilla was asked to change the name of their browser. They then changed it to the name of another OSS project, which was their own darned fault.
I was going to suggest IceWM as well, but I wasn't sure if you wanted the Windows type taskbar and start bar or not. IceWM is very lightweight and easy to modify through its config file (or icepref). I use it often when setting up underpowered machines for others.
Debian's apt is really nice, but while you still have Mandrake on the system you should read up about urpmi (Mandrake's command line utility for handling RPMs). It is very similar to apt-get, and has become a very mature product on its own. Too bad no other distro has picked up on it at all.
If you look under the hood in Mandrake, you may find that you don't need to move to Debian at all. I was contemplating a move to Debian before I found urpmi (and still use Debian on a lot some server type machines, along with FreeBSD and NetBSD), but now I'm pretty happy with Mandrake on my client systems. People assume because it is user friendly it won't appeal to the power users, but there is a whole lot of stuff there for those who wish not to be point-and-click dependant. Not that I'd discourage you from trying Debian or Gentoo or anything else, but you might as well take a closer look at what you have first.
Imagine if we start having to register for every website we view. Every time you find a new site you get to spend time "telling them a little bit about yourself" (or making up shit) instead of reading what you came for.
It is bad enough a few stores ask for your name, address, phone number, etc. just so that you can buy stuff from them. But at least there you're standing in a line with nothing else you could be doing. On the web, your stop may be for 10 seconds. If you have to register, you greatly increase the time it takes to move around the web. A hyperlinked web of information does not lend itself well to registration at every hop.
I find it quicker to scan through the comments and click the google link than to register, and I roam enough between machines that cookies aren't going to help that any. It is to the point that if I see a NYTimes article that is only mildly interesting, I'll pass on it entirely instead of looking for the link or registering. But the idiots that run that site can't understand that registration is hurting them, because it is "so easy" to just sign up. Well I say screw their stupid signup.
On a seperate note, if Google can be a partner, why not have Slashdot be a partner? Couldn't we offer them the chance to include us a a partner, and if they refuse, we can refuse to ever post links to the bastards ever again? It would be a much more effective protest than just bypassing the system through google links (which they probably don't notice due to the sheer volume they get from google).
You might want to note that GNOME's recent focus has been on usability and simplicity, and not lots of features and customization. KDE is more likely what you want for customization if you're choosing between the two main desktops.
Of course, others would argue you're even better off with fluxbox or enlightenment or windowmaker if you want a really customized environment. Mandrake has a lot of window managers available in the contrib sources, so I'd give a bunch of them a try if you have time.
Next thing you know, we'll see this on Windows Update:
MyDoom.C - A critical update for the MyDoom virus is now available. This update fixes the flaw that prevented infected machines from launching DOS attacks at microsoft.com past the expiry date. Install this update if you need microsoft.com DOSing capabilities.
> I've never used AV software and probably never will - I just don't have a need, just like many other slashdotters.
Until recently I could've said the same thing. I used to be primarily a windows 98 user, and now primarily use Linux (with a single win2k box at work). I figured you'd have to be stupid to be infected with anything - just keep your patches up to date and don't open attachments.
Unfortunately WindowsUpdate claimed that I was all patched up when Nachi came by (but it was a lying POS). I ended up getting a variant that didn't cause any stability problems, but the virus got noticed when it scanned one of our unix servers on port 135. I had to clean up the virus and manually patch the system. Following that, I immediatly installed the AV software we use at work.
My ideal solution would be to throw my Windows box out a window. If it weren't for one piece of Windows software that I do some development on, I wouldn't even need it. Oh well, soon I'll be able to move it off the network where it can do no more harm.
Apple has been having loads of problems with the iBook, but normally their hardware is rock solid. Their "Power" hardware is especially good. If I had a need for a new laptop right now, it'd definately be a Powerbook.
KDE has a build system called Konstruct for building KDE packages. You could give that a try if you don't want to use the less than great Red Hat packages.
Also, I'm pretty sure there are third parties that package KDE for Red Hat and Fedora. Since I'm not a user of those distros, I can't really help you there.
Actually, they are much better off adding features and moving towards the OASIS file format based on OpenOffice.org. That way they can just use OO.org's filters instead of having to write their own.
In the mean time, working on better OpenOffice.org import and export opens up the possibility of using those same filters from the command line (the OO.org guys are working on seperating these from the UI). Yes, 2 levels of filters sucks, but it would probably add some degree of support for formats that KOffice doens't currently have filters for. It would also help.sxw and such formats become the standard in the non-MS world.
So that is why the KOffice team is more worried about features and UI design than filters. That, and filters work is not exactly the most fun coding in the world. They actually did quite a bit of work on their filters for this release due to pressure from the user base. I'm sure there would've been many more fun things for them to do, so personally I'd thank them instead of bashing them.
Or you can help them out if you'd like. There are only a handful of developers doing all of the work for KOffice. It is amazing they can do what they do with so little resources.
I find the multicast stuff fairly interesting, since I have in the past worked on streaming video using multicast. I guess I should've applied for grant money to integrate our multicast capability into Helix. In fact, Dr. Kevin Almeroth references some of our work, so maybe I should get in touch with him.
Information on our multicast work can be found here: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~vernon/sword.html Anyhow, on to your questions.
People here will likely be pretty happy about the Xiph.org and Jabber grants. The tagging work also looks good for open source since it will be GPL or LGPL. I don't know much about the 3D work - it could be something Sun and their 3D desktop team would be interested in. But maybe not since it isn't Java3D.
I haven't tried the Helix player, and honestly, I don't really have that much reason to. Had it been built about a year earlier, I might have more interest. But right now I'm pretty happy with what is available in the player space already (xine/totem, mplayer, VLC/VideoLan, etc). Plus the other players either come with the distro, or are easier to get than Helix. If Helix were easier to get through the distros, it may see more usage (ie. apt-get helix-player, urpmi helix-player, emerge helix-player). Having to register and login to see content and download OSS software is annoying.
I wonder if there is the possibility to work with the other clients, or at least have compatibility with their codecs to avoid duplicate work. Even on the server side, it'd be nice to see some cooperation between Helix and others (Darwin,VideoLan).
Right now it seems Helix is working together well with the research community, and the resulting work may push Real and Helix into newly emerging areas of media. Unfortunatly it seems that hasn't translated into downloads or deployments of the core client and server products yet. Even a lot of online radio stations seem to have made the move from.rm to.wmv (so likely from Real to WindowsMediaServer, even though the Real server does.wmv/.asf better than MS). As this used to be Real's strongest area, I'm starting to wonder what is left. Not many people liked the old Real branded players (as you can see from comments here, many were turned off forever by them), and not much content online is in.rm anymore.
I guess I'd suggest getting the Helix player into the distributions (or at least create an easy way to download it). The Real player will probably continue to be popular with Sun's desktop and maybe other commercial Linux desktop offerings.
Helix server integration into Apache is another area that would be really great (our SWORD prototype uses Apache, so I'd be doubly intrested in this). Since work is going into Helix and WebSphere integration, some of this work has likely already been done. Making this available to webmasters would be a nice way of competing with IIS/WMS integration in the Windows world. If this gets into the distros, suddenly Helix and Apache may be a base for custom PVR and home theatre applications.
Unfortunatly for Real, a lot of this work is being done in parallel by other projects. As I said before, projects like mplayer, xine, VLC/VideoLan, and Darwin all can do what Helix does, and all of them are open source. The thing that could set Helix apart is the ability to do it all - integration with Apache, Jabber, Xiph.org, xine/mplayer codecs, streaming of rm/wmv/mov, etc. Also, a player that is more userfriendly than mplayer/xine would give Helix a leg up. Since these players have much maligned UIs, this would've been a great place for Helix to shine. But the others aren't standing still either, as a player like totem didn't take long to build and look pretty good.
Hopefully this rant has something useful for you. I apologize that I don't have the time to rewrite this to be a bit more coherent.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out the CBC story about this scandal. HP claims that the Canadian government is actually a victim of fraud from someone in the DND. Given the other scandals in this government, I wouldn't be all that shocked.
Like the largest oil reserve in the world perhaps? Of course it is all stuck in some bloody tar sands in northern Alberta, making it a bitch to get at.
But really, if you buy an eMac with a Superdrive, it will come with iDVD. If iDVD actually is good enough for what these people need, it *might* be cheaper to buy the new machine than it is to buy the equivalent Windows software.
If you're needing the professional Apple tools to meet the requirements though (the * Pro tools), then a Windows or Linux professional software solution is certainly cheaper.
Yeah, NetBSD uses pkgsrc instead of ports because ports isn't portible enough to run on 40 architectures, whereas pkgsrc is.
Ironic that ports isn't portible enough...
Yeah, I hate how all those distors have a different kernel. And all those different compilers are confusing.
Oh wait, there is only linux and gcc. Different versions sure, but that is no different from having Java 1.1, Java 1.4, etc.
The distributions tend to for the most part have all the same packages, and rarely do distro specific forks. So you always get linux-kernel, gcc, glibc, apache, bash, etc. I bet they'd all ship this new open source Java as well.
Setting up printing in any OS can really suck. Especially network printing. Windows tries to automatically give you the right driver, but if the SMB server has a different driver than what your version of Windows wants, good luck.
I've seen printer installations in Mandrake, Windows, and Mac OS that take a single click and they are done. But I've also seen the hair-pulling hours worth of work in each OS as well. And a few times where the point-and-click installs a printer for you, but your apps won't print for some unexplained reason. Printing sucks period - I haven't set up my home printer for years due to lack of need and desire to fuss with it.
In fact, the only time it doesn't suck where I work is when cups is working properly. I can install a new Linux distro and have cups+kprinter automatically pick up all of our networked printers. BTW, thank you KDE for Kprinter - it works with any linux app, not just KDE ones, and it is a great printer dialog!
I think CUPS has serious potential to fix the printing nightmare, but the distros are the ones that need to get some good front ends for it. Just because RedHat/Fedora's front end sucks compared to the Mandrake and Mac Os printer GUI, doesn't mean the underlying CUPS stuff is no good.
Yeah, it would be interesting if he knew about IBM's wishes in advance, and decided to publish an open letter to Sun before IBM does.
Then it looks like he got this whole ball rolling, and he can take credit for saving another company through open source (although open source didn't exactly save Netscape the company did it - though it did save Netscape the browser).
Of course all of the above is a devil's advocate sort of post. If ESR really were that much of a pain in the ass to companies promoting OSS, he wouldn't be left in charge of the OSI.
Well they already are doing the Linux and AMD64 thing now, even though the Open Sourcing of Java woud've done very little to hurt their profits, unlike a full takeover for Linux and x86 would.
It is kind of funny that one of the last major applications to migrate to GTK2.0 is the application that created GTK in the first place (hence GTK - GIMP ToolKit).
Although I guess it kind of makes sense since GTK and GIMP are pretty tightly integrated - it would be far from trivial to switch versions.
First off, freeze it real good. When I first tried this, I didn't get it cold enough, so it died again before I could get much data. I was lucky that my drive gave me multiple chances at it, as usually you only get one.
If freezing it doesn't get it working, drop it onto a hard flat surface. Sometimes this will free up whatever is stuck.
As a last resort, try banging on the drive while the computer is running. You might be lucky and get it spinning again.
If none of the above work, you can either void the warrenty by trying to swap parts with other drives (caution: drives that seem to be identical sometimes are not - match serial numbers and try to get one from the same batch if possible), or you can have him spend a lot of money in a data recovery warehouse. Depends how important the data is.
And I guess if he's willing to spend lots of money to get the data back, you may not want to beat the crap out of the drive to get it working again. If it is just going in the garbage anyways, then anything goes. Just try the freezing first, as it has the best chance of success (in my experience) and does the least damage.
Otherwise Windows XP will be pretty unbearable (if you can't manage to secure this power, check out the end of my comment for a nasty workaround). It is almost impossible to do anything you ned to do without being an Administrator on the system. At the very least, you'll need to be a "Power User".
If you are able to get some software installed, Cygwin is pretty nice to have. A real shell (bash) instead of command.com is nice, and the X server is very good as well. It can run in multiwindow/rootless mode as well, so X windows can be managed by Win Xp instead of having a seperate XFree86 window with its own window manager.
For both usability and security reasons, you need to get something other than IE as your browser. FireFox or the Mozilla suite would be the best.
There are plenty of other open source applications that have been ported to Windows as well, so whatever tools you used to might be available.
If you are unlucky enough to not even have installation privilages, you do have a few options. First off, as others have mentioned, PuTTY is free ssh client that does not need an installation. Heck, it will run fine if you just select "Open" instead of "Save" on the download, although you'll want a copy on disk if possible so that you can save profiles and such.
If you need graphical applications from Linux/Unix and can't get an X server or VNC client installed, you can resort to using VNC through a Java Applet. I can't image this would be a joy to use though.
As a last resort, you can make a custon Knoppix/Morphix CD that boots into XPde instead of KDE. Nobody around you is likely to notice the difference.
Yeah, and the BIOS guys claim to be working on a lightweight browser to put in the BIOS, hence why Mozilla was asked to change the name of their browser. They then changed it to the name of another OSS project, which was their own darned fault.
Too bad we won't be hearing any more from them, since their server must be a melted, steaming pile of scrap metal by now.
Oh well, that hasn't stopped us from posting 400+ comments to this story.
I was going to suggest IceWM as well, but I wasn't sure if you wanted the Windows type taskbar and start bar or not. IceWM is very lightweight and easy to modify through its config file (or icepref). I use it often when setting up underpowered machines for others.
Debian's apt is really nice, but while you still have Mandrake on the system you should read up about urpmi (Mandrake's command line utility for handling RPMs). It is very similar to apt-get, and has become a very mature product on its own. Too bad no other distro has picked up on it at all.
If you look under the hood in Mandrake, you may find that you don't need to move to Debian at all. I was contemplating a move to Debian before I found urpmi (and still use Debian on a lot some server type machines, along with FreeBSD and NetBSD), but now I'm pretty happy with Mandrake on my client systems. People assume because it is user friendly it won't appeal to the power users, but there is a whole lot of stuff there for those who wish not to be point-and-click dependant. Not that I'd discourage you from trying Debian or Gentoo or anything else, but you might as well take a closer look at what you have first.
Likely Konqueror has better support with the KSVG library, but I could be wrong since I haven't updated yet.
Imagine if we start having to register for every website we view. Every time you find a new site you get to spend time "telling them a little bit about yourself" (or making up shit) instead of reading what you came for.
It is bad enough a few stores ask for your name, address, phone number, etc. just so that you can buy stuff from them. But at least there you're standing in a line with nothing else you could be doing. On the web, your stop may be for 10 seconds. If you have to register, you greatly increase the time it takes to move around the web. A hyperlinked web of information does not lend itself well to registration at every hop.
I find it quicker to scan through the comments and click the google link than to register, and I roam enough between machines that cookies aren't going to help that any. It is to the point that if I see a NYTimes article that is only mildly interesting, I'll pass on it entirely instead of looking for the link or registering. But the idiots that run that site can't understand that registration is hurting them, because it is "so easy" to just sign up. Well I say screw their stupid signup.
On a seperate note, if Google can be a partner, why not have Slashdot be a partner? Couldn't we offer them the chance to include us a a partner, and if they refuse, we can refuse to ever post links to the bastards ever again? It would be a much more effective protest than just bypassing the system through google links (which they probably don't notice due to the sheer volume they get from google).
Good point, but when the heck is Mozilla going to integrate SVG support? They should really support SVG nearly as good as PNG by now, but they don't.
You might want to note that GNOME's recent focus has been on usability and simplicity, and not lots of features and customization. KDE is more likely what you want for customization if you're choosing between the two main desktops.
Of course, others would argue you're even better off with fluxbox or enlightenment or windowmaker if you want a really customized environment. Mandrake has a lot of window managers available in the contrib sources, so I'd give a bunch of them a try if you have time.
Next thing you know, we'll see this on Windows Update:
MyDoom.C - A critical update for the MyDoom virus is now available. This update fixes the flaw that prevented infected machines from launching DOS attacks at microsoft.com past the expiry date. Install this update if you need microsoft.com DOSing capabilities.
> I've never used AV software and probably never will - I just don't have a need, just like many other slashdotters.
Until recently I could've said the same thing. I used to be primarily a windows 98 user, and now primarily use Linux (with a single win2k box at work). I figured you'd have to be stupid to be infected with anything - just keep your patches up to date and don't open attachments.
Unfortunately WindowsUpdate claimed that I was all patched up when Nachi came by (but it was a lying POS). I ended up getting a variant that didn't cause any stability problems, but the virus got noticed when it scanned one of our unix servers on port 135. I had to clean up the virus and manually patch the system. Following that, I immediatly installed the AV software we use at work.
My ideal solution would be to throw my Windows box out a window. If it weren't for one piece of Windows software that I do some development on, I wouldn't even need it. Oh well, soon I'll be able to move it off the network where it can do no more harm.
My advise: Buy the Powerbook.
Apple has been having loads of problems with the iBook, but normally their hardware is rock solid. Their "Power" hardware is especially good. If I had a need for a new laptop right now, it'd definately be a Powerbook.
KDE has a build system called Konstruct for building KDE packages. You could give that a try if you don't want to use the less than great Red Hat packages.
Also, I'm pretty sure there are third parties that package KDE for Red Hat and Fedora. Since I'm not a user of those distros, I can't really help you there.
Actually, they are much better off adding features and moving towards the OASIS file format based on OpenOffice.org. That way they can just use OO.org's filters instead of having to write their own.
.sxw and such formats become the standard in the non-MS world.
In the mean time, working on better OpenOffice.org import and export opens up the possibility of using those same filters from the command line (the OO.org guys are working on seperating these from the UI). Yes, 2 levels of filters sucks, but it would probably add some degree of support for formats that KOffice doens't currently have filters for. It would also help
So that is why the KOffice team is more worried about features and UI design than filters. That, and filters work is not exactly the most fun coding in the world. They actually did quite a bit of work on their filters for this release due to pressure from the user base. I'm sure there would've been many more fun things for them to do, so personally I'd thank them instead of bashing them.
Or you can help them out if you'd like. There are only a handful of developers doing all of the work for KOffice. It is amazing they can do what they do with so little resources.
Someone should mod this guy up. I did, but then I wrote a comment, probably nullifying the moderation.
This is good feedback. Hopefully it gets read.
I find the multicast stuff fairly interesting, since I have in the past worked on streaming video using multicast. I guess I should've applied for grant money to integrate our multicast capability into Helix. In fact, Dr. Kevin Almeroth references some of our work, so maybe I should get in touch with him.
.rm to .wmv (so likely from Real to WindowsMediaServer, even though the Real server does .wmv/.asf better than MS). As this used to be Real's strongest area, I'm starting to wonder what is left. Not many people liked the old Real branded players (as you can see from comments here, many were turned off forever by them), and not much content online is in .rm anymore.
Information on our multicast work can be found here:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~vernon/sword.html
Anyhow, on to your questions.
People here will likely be pretty happy about the Xiph.org and Jabber grants. The tagging work also looks good for open source since it will be GPL or LGPL. I don't know much about the 3D work - it could be something Sun and their 3D desktop team would be interested in. But maybe not since it isn't Java3D.
I haven't tried the Helix player, and honestly, I don't really have that much reason to. Had it been built about a year earlier, I might have more interest. But right now I'm pretty happy with what is available in the player space already (xine/totem, mplayer, VLC/VideoLan, etc). Plus the other players either come with the distro, or are easier to get than Helix. If Helix were easier to get through the distros, it may see more usage (ie. apt-get helix-player, urpmi helix-player, emerge helix-player). Having to register and login to see content and download OSS software is annoying.
I wonder if there is the possibility to work with the other clients, or at least have compatibility with their codecs to avoid duplicate work. Even on the server side, it'd be nice to see some cooperation between Helix and others (Darwin,VideoLan).
Right now it seems Helix is working together well with the research community, and the resulting work may push Real and Helix into newly emerging areas of media. Unfortunatly it seems that hasn't translated into downloads or deployments of the core client and server products yet. Even a lot of online radio stations seem to have made the move from
I guess I'd suggest getting the Helix player into the distributions (or at least create an easy way to download it). The Real player will probably continue to be popular with Sun's desktop and maybe other commercial Linux desktop offerings.
Helix server integration into Apache is another area that would be really great (our SWORD prototype uses Apache, so I'd be doubly intrested in this). Since work is going into Helix and WebSphere integration, some of this work has likely already been done. Making this available to webmasters would be a nice way of competing with IIS/WMS integration in the Windows world. If this gets into the distros, suddenly Helix and Apache may be a base for custom PVR and home theatre applications.
Unfortunatly for Real, a lot of this work is being done in parallel by other projects. As I said before, projects like mplayer, xine, VLC/VideoLan, and Darwin all can do what Helix does, and all of them are open source. The thing that could set Helix apart is the ability to do it all - integration with Apache, Jabber, Xiph.org, xine/mplayer codecs, streaming of rm/wmv/mov, etc. Also, a player that is more userfriendly than mplayer/xine would give Helix a leg up. Since these players have much maligned UIs, this would've been a great place for Helix to shine. But the others aren't standing still either, as a player like totem didn't take long to build and look pretty good.
Hopefully this rant has something useful for you. I apologize that I don't have the time to rewrite this to be a bit more coherent.