OMM is a close second to the greatest example of video game journalism there ever was, Amiga Power. Never before had the industry seen such ruthless, tactless critique on video games, the video game industry, and even its peers. never afraid to use the entire range of 0-100% for scoring games (as opposed to the 73% syndrome that the industry still seems to be stuck in, and maintaining journalistic integrity by refusing to review incomplete games and take bribes, Amiga Power shined above its competitors.
unfortunately like OMM it's just a memory for those who remember it, and unlike OMM many people this side of the pond never experienced it firsthand. Stuart Campbell's article archive and AP2 (sort of a post-hummus commentary of it all) serve as beacons of its greatness.
and no, i'm not an amiga fanatic, but i played one in my troubled youth.
the root of it all is that the mplayer team seems to want to protect their "brand name" in the same way that djb held a grip on qmail et all with his weirdo license (or lack thereof). they seem quite proud of mplayer's abilities and performance and the inclusion of a "crippled" mplayer in debian would certainly defy that. my suggestion was to create an mplayer debian package that can only play.au, just to piss them off. you'll notice there is no qmail/djbdns in debian or OpenBSD for similar reasons. (see http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#djb and http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archive/openbsd- ports/200108/msg00461.htmlfor further clarification). instead of wacky configuration file pathnames and installation locations, the mplayer group seems convinced that their system for providing one binary for multiple sub-architectures is right.
but unlike djb, the mplayer group utilizes the standard GPL license (probably because they were too lazy to write their own crazy license) and seems to think they can utilize the GPL as a shield for protection of their illegal software.
in short, this isn't the first case of killer-app type software that is written by immature and/or wacky authors with questionable licensing terms (bitchx, qmail/djbdns, glftpd, vision-x, etc.)
if anything, their messages to debian-devel and the retalliatory flames are certainly entertaining reading.
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OMM is a close second to the greatest example of video game journalism there ever was, Amiga Power. Never before had the industry seen such ruthless, tactless critique on video games, the video game industry, and even its peers. never afraid to use the entire range of 0-100% for scoring games (as opposed to the 73% syndrome that the industry still seems to be stuck in, and maintaining journalistic integrity by refusing to review incomplete games and take bribes, Amiga Power shined above its competitors.
unfortunately like OMM it's just a memory for those who remember it, and unlike OMM many people this side of the pond never experienced it firsthand. Stuart Campbell's article archive and AP2 (sort of a post-hummus commentary of it all) serve as beacons of its greatness.
and no, i'm not an amiga fanatic, but i played one in my troubled youth.
but unlike djb, the mplayer group utilizes the standard GPL license (probably because they were too lazy to write their own crazy license) and seems to think they can utilize the GPL as a shield for protection of their illegal software.
in short, this isn't the first case of killer-app type software that is written by immature and/or wacky authors with questionable licensing terms (bitchx, qmail/djbdns, glftpd, vision-x, etc.)
if anything, their messages to debian-devel and the retalliatory flames are certainly entertaining reading.
A quick glossing of the mailing list shows that a driver for the Quickcam VC does exist, and works.
The author cannot release it until the parellel port guys update their code to support ECP, which the driver requires.