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Linux Version of Democracy Player Released 111

Posted by CowboyNeal from the tune-in-turn-up dept.
clahey writes "The Participatory Culture Foundation just released Democracy Player 0.8.2 for Linux, the first beta version for Linux. It's a free software internet TV client with built in support for both RSS video podcasts and downloading using BitTorrent. It can even scrape web pages for videos. It's an excellent way to find great internet video. For example, once you've installed Democracy, make sure to check out The Postal Service - Such Great Heights on the Telemusicvision channel."
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Linux Version of Democracy Player Released More

Linux Version of Democracy Player Released

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  • No video? (Score:2, Funny)

    by CCFreak2K ( 930973 )
    Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

    How appropriate for an internet TV appliance article.
    • On running, I get a DEP prevention error. Now large sections of information are being gathered and transmitted to Microsoft!

  • What's that saying again... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday April 27, 2006 @07:25PM (#15217428) Homepage
    Never let open-source programmers decide the name of their applications!

  • Nice Summary! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by paulthomas ( 685756 ) *
    Why should I take special care to "check out the Postal Service?"

    What exactly does this bring to the table? People who had or have an interest in the band probably saw the video in 2003 when it was released. It has NOTHING to do with the software being advertised.

    Perhaps if the video were mentioned in the article it would be more accepta--OH WAIT! What article? All we have is a link to the home page of this project. Okay, it's open source, and it's probably cool. Fine. Submit an article, or at least a

    • Re:Nice Summary! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wannabe Code Monkey ( 638617 ) on Thursday April 27, 2006 @08:43PM (#15217897)

      Why should I take special care to "check out the Postal Service?"

      What exactly does this bring to the table? People who had or have an interest in the band probably saw the video in 2003 when it was released. It has NOTHING to do with the software being advertised.

      Hey now, calm down now buddy. I'll see if I can help shed some light on the problem. Here's a quote from the summary: It can even scrape web pages for videos. It's an excellent way to find great internet video. For example... It then goes on to talk about the Postal Service video you mentioned. They were using this specific video as an example of how it can scrape web pages for videos, one of the features of this video player. A specific example given to display the features of a product seems very apropos to me.

      Perhaps if the video were mentioned in the article it would be more accepta--OH WAIT! What article? All we have is a link to the home page of this project. Okay, it's open source, and it's probably cool. Fine. Submit an article

      Since when are articles the only thing you can link to in a slashdot submission? It's an open source video player with (apparently) tons of cool features with its first released linux version. It sounds interesting and slashdot worthy. And, how else could you get any more information about an open source program other than linking to it's web site? Probably better than a press release or article.

      • Fair enough. I still didn't like it, but perhaps it was more the tone than the content that turned me off.
      • Actually, telemusicvision uses Broadcast Machine, our video channel server software. It distributes the videos using bittorrent. I didn't mean for those sentences to be connected. Sorry.
      • Why should I take special care to "check out the Postal Service?" What exactly does this bring to the table? People who had or have an interest in the band probably saw the video in 2003 when it was released. It has NOTHING to do with the software being advertised

        I thought it might be due to the amazing similarity between that video and the most recent Apple ad about their new Intel processors....

        But I could be wrong (I know, I'm not supposed to admit that on /.)
    • Why should I take special care to "check out the Postal Service?"

      Because it's an example of high quality content you can get through this kind of system.

      What exactly does this bring to the table? People who had or have an interest in the band probably saw the video in 2003 when it was released. It has NOTHING to do with the software being advertised.

      It's an example of high quality content you can get through this kind of system.
      • It took me quite a while to figure out reading the comments here that "the postal service" was apparently the name of a music band or something along those lines.

        I too didn't really see the point of going to a postal service's site to get great videos ("and this is Bob sorting parcels, say hi Bob").

        Of course most music videos aren't that much more exciting either...
        • The postal service has its own TV network, called USPS-TV. Obviously only accessible in USPS premises. Mostly just worker safety and other programs required by HR.

          Now, they did make a video at one mail processing plant of a package going through the system, from the point of view of the package. But all I've seen of that is a still shot, no actual video. :(

    • Sorry about that. I never saw the video on TV. I put that in there because I thought maybe having a specific thing to try out might make them more likely to try our cool project. Plus I really liked the video.

  • Unfortunately, it's still buggy as hell... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Thursday April 27, 2006 @07:27PM (#15217450)
    I've been using the democracy player under OSX and Windows for the last several versions. It also frequently crashes, often taking out its config files in the process. The bitorrent bits wreak havoc on your network connection (on OSX and WinXP). The Linux version JUST became available, but given the problems with the more "mature" platforms, I'm reluctant to inflict it on my Linux laptop...

    • Re:Unfortunately, it's still buggy as hell... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CarpetShark ( 865376 ) on Thursday April 27, 2006 @08:02PM (#15217697)
      The last windows version was pretty bad. However, the linux version at least uses different user interface technology, and the last release was largely focused on stability. I just used it for a few hours on Linux, and for a first version, it's pretty good. Not without its faults, but download it, try it, file bug reports, and keep on using it 'til they're fixed; I'm sure you won't be disappointed :)
    • At least on OS X they make the ultimate open source fault: Thinking end users are all geeks.

      They break backward compatibility at least from 0.81 to 0.82 , I was really really bugged to see my gigabyte level movie archive (big deal, 512kbit here) gone havoc after updating to 0.82.

      Solution was to delete ~/Application Support/Democracy they say. Yea, see I know what ~ means ;)

      This always happens in open source applications. I really don't want to generalize but it is the deal. Sorry.

      If there is ONE project to
    • not in my experience. .82 has been pretty solid for me. I'm using it on a Powermac G5 running 10.4.6 and a crapload of ram/vram.

  • You Blasted Democrats! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27, 2006 @07:34PM (#15217497)
    F* off you democrats! We don't need your Democracy propaganda on Slashdot.

  • slashvertising? (Score:5, Funny)

    by illuminatedwax ( 537131 ) <stdrange@alumni. ... du minus painter> on Thursday April 27, 2006 @07:42PM (#15217553) Journal
    This player is really neat! But there are other players out there.

    For example, once you've read this comment, make sure you check out Nickelback's new smash hit, "All The Right Reasons" on www.supermusicchannel.com today! And once you've done that, make sure you go to www.pepsico.com for your chance to enter a FREE sweepstakes to win more Pepsi products!

    • Re:slashvertising? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Putting Nickelback in an advertisement is as big a mistake as naming a chocolate product with "Poopykins" in it... or, like, naming a videogame console something that sounds like urine. Can you imagine something so silly?
    • I don't know if I'd call this advertising. Democracy Player *seems* to be a non-commercial project. The code is open, and the development model is relatively open too. I'm not quite convinced of their openness and intentions though, since their channel guide seems to be closed. If it remains closed, it's a way for them to lock-in customers, AND producers, by building up a large database of media that no one else can put into their own products. More importantly, the channel guide URL can't be changed i

    • RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cahiha ( 873942 )
      I suggest you read the background at participatoryculture.org [participatoryculture.org]. Since you can't be bothered to follow the links, here are the relevant bits:

      Our mission is to build an open and democratic television platform.

      Television is the defining medium of our culture. There's now an opportunity to create a television culture that is fluid, diverse, exciting, and beautiful. Built by people working together.

      The platform is open-source and built on open-standards. This matters because it keeps video flowin

  • Democracy = TV = advertising = buying things and throwing them in landfills while your society overpopulates, pollutes, and destroys all finer things for convenience. Brilliant name!
    • Democracy = TV = advertising = buying things and throwing them in landfills while your society overpopulates, pollutes, and destroys all finer things for convenience. Brilliant name!

      Infoterror = woke up on wrong side of bed = likes making two sides of an equation not equal = Insightful mod. Brilliant Post!

    • Democracy is just a government framework, not an economic one. And contrary to what some believe, I dont think Capitalism has to come with Democracy.
  • there are separate downloads for Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora? Well, ok, there are actually two different downloads for Fedora.

    And if one is running Mandriva? Suse? ....
    • It crashes on Ubuntu right after any movie (I tried 3 different ones) finishes to play... and DP re-downloads crashed movies after I fire it up again. I guess you don't have to make a decent product to make it to /.
    • And if one is running Mandriva? Suse? .... .. then you learn about how to install the dependent software and build packages for your distro. If you are into Participating in your Culture, you will redistribute the package, or maybe even join the project and make a new package for each stable release. Sorry they don't have silver platters for everyone, I think it is pretty smooth that they have been able to develop this 'platform' for Linux, Windows and Mac at the same time.

      I also think that they are being

  • Dependancy issues on Dapper (Score:3, Informative)

    by eqisow ( 877574 ) on Thursday April 27, 2006 @08:15PM (#15217761) Homepage
    The Ubuntu .deb has dependancy issues on Ubuntu Dapper Drake. dpkg complains of libboost-python1.33.0 being missing because Dapper use libboost-python1.33.1.
  • No builds of DemocracyPlayer for Mandriva. Can't install Fedora rpm on Mandriva 2005 because of unresolvable deps wrt libstdc++...


    Tried to compile from source (stable, not svn), but couldn't make heads-or-tails of the README (half-done).

    Anybody have any luck with non-Debian/Fedora Distros?
  • The number of dependencies this thing comes with is obscene. Nice try, kids.
  • Democracy? Is this just another file sharing application?
  • It seems as though proposed legislation would mandate some pretty nasty DRM be incorporated into broadcast streams. If that be the case, I suppose Democracy and the very idea of Participatory Culture will be finished in the USA.

    I was wondering how long it would be before our representatives finally outlawed Democracy. Apparently, the day is at hand.

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