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Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux"
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Dec 31, 2006 09:30 PM
from the penguins-need-not-apply dept.
from the penguins-need-not-apply dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."
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Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Informative)
And even if you think it is illegal to watch MPEG on Linux in the EU, the crime would be committed by the veiwer, not the broadcaster.
Please don't do this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's much better to admit there's nothing that works out there that's OSS than to recommend a poor OSS solution. The reason is that the number one justification against OSS is shoddy quality. You talk to J. Random PHB and the reason they don't want to use OSS is because it's poor quality/not supported. Well, advocating things that are, in fact, poor quality just provides them with ammo for their argument.
Also it can hurt a format to get lots of exposure before it's ready. If everyone's first exposure to Theora is when it's buggy, that idea will form in their minds and later when it's stable, they will still associate Theora = buggy and thus give it a pass.
At this point, we just need to wait on Theora. Vorbis is great, I've no doubt in time Theroa will be its match, however it's not the kind of thing that will happen in a day.
Parent
Re:Please don't do this (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Why?
And that reason is???
That wouldn't be true, of course.
The patents on MPEG-1 have long ago expired. It has pretty good quality (better than Theora/VP3) when encoded with a recent implimentation (ie. libavcodec for video, twolame for audio). And more than that, it is by far the most widely compatible format around, supported by just about every video player made in the past several years, on just about every single platform around.
I, however, do. The VP3 codec is hated by just about everyone who knows anything about video.
It has really poor video quality, compared to even much older video codecs.
It is very CPU-intensive to encode.
It's playback performance is horrible. Once you reach resolutions where a full frame can't fit in your CPU cache, you get performance worse than codecs like h.264.
In some 4 years of Theora's development, Xiph hasn't removed any of VP3's limitations, nor added any advantages over the original VP3 codec. Since they've frozen the bitstream, even the potential for them to do any of that has passed...
I was somewhat active in the Theora development process some time ago, but I've long since given it up for dead.
Parent
What happened to more eyes, shallow bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
No codecs required, either (Score:5, Informative)
Going straight Theora+Vorbis wouldn't work that well, since the user would have the install the codecs first and Vorbis/Theora support is severely lacking on OS X.
Quoting the site:
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Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not. Using a codec that everyone can play after installing the additional software is better than using one that some people can't play at all.
Besides, it's not as if the Windows users would have to fend for themselves -- all the EU has to do is pick a player for Windows and link to it from their site (maybe write something like "can't see the video? click here"). It's Not That Hard!
Parent
Someone's fired (Score:5, Insightful)
A blatant lie to cover up for laziness... (Score:5, Funny)
<complete_nonsense>
You don't know the EU very well do you? You see this has nothing to do with laziness. If the EU replaces it's WMV streaming systems with a competing product it will result in 68 shirt and tie wearing MCSEs with nice conservative Bill Gates haircuts being replaced by a couple of hairy bucktoothed nerds with a nasty armpit malodor problem and the fashions sense of a Portuguese donkey wrangler. So this whole mess is really all about French objections because of the effect such a change would have on the already low fashion standards of EU employees and all the other EU member countries fears that it might make the unemployment situation in the European MCSE community any worse since the job security of the European MCSE community is already badly threatened by the way Linux looks set to exterminate Windows from the EU's desktop computer market.
</complete_nonsense>
Parent
Re:Having said that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Where's the illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so illegal about a Flash-based streaming player?
Re:Where's the illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Not much to be said here (Score:5, Insightful)
The petition to urge them to use a platform-independent format is a good answer.
Hello, there are open-source players for WMV3 (Score:5, Informative)
Yes I think it still has patent issues or something but in Europe I don't think that matters.
Youtube!!! (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
Needs rewording (Score:5, Insightful)
realplayer (Score:5, Informative)
Interpretation (Score:5, Interesting)
Realplayer? (Score:4, Insightful)
So why again is it illegal to run something that is not MS specific?
Hello, welcome to the new year, we're in the 21st century, not in the early 90s, there's something called "interoperability" that has been growing in the tech world... Time for reality to harvest!
Re:Realplayer? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
IT'S OK (Score:5, Funny)
looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Informative)
This is the market share for browsers as of Nov 2006:
Microsoft Internet Explorer, 80.56%
Firefox, 13.50%
Safari, 4.03%
Netscape, 0.83%
Opera, 0.67%
This is the market share for Operating Systems as of Nov 2006:
Windows XP, 84.95%
Windows 2000, 5.46%
Mac OS, 4.10%
Windows 98, 1.90%
MacIntel, 1.29%
Windows ME, 0.91%
Windows NT, 0.76%
Linux, 0.37%
You could argue for better firefox support, but as much as we love linux, I suppose they have no obligation to make it work for something that is that small minority among desktop users.
Will not stand in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
We will not have our legislation locked down in ways that force EU citicens to buy software from one specific vendor. FUCK YOU.
We like to think we're better than the US. Apperarently our legislators are also bought off. If you as an elected politician get your salary from Microsoft Corporation or Apple Computer inc, please report directly to me for your ticket to Baghdad and the Saddam Hussein rope massage. Thank you for your incompetent attempt at running a democracy, please don't come again.
Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Great work... (Score:5, Insightful)