Silverlight to follow Obama into US presidency Barack Obama's inauguration as US president next week will be broadcast online using Microsoft's Silverlight browser-based media player. Microsoft said Friday that Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee had selected Silverlight to stream live coverage of his swearing-in from its site, scheduled for Tuesday in Washington DC …
Great! Hang on i'll just head on over to http://silverlight.net/ and install it:
One moment, please, while the current Silverlight installation status is determined...
"Microsoft Silverlight may not be supported on your computer's hardware or operating system."
Who was the asshat that made that decision
This page says "Welcome, Please download Microsoft Silverlight to view our destinations map."
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/dests.php?flash=chk
Well I *could* do that, yeh, I could go chase down Silverlight which no doubt needs a load of other patches installed, but instead I just went to another site.
I reckon Microsoft is paying a lot of money for these Silverlight exclusives.
We see the "change". A product of a company which was documented to be a monopoly and abusing it by american courts must be installed to watch president. Not just that, EU ruled the same too.
Perhaps they should also pass a legislation to make people run Windows and Mac OS X Intel, the only platforms may run Silverlight.
Hulu is advertising the inauguration, and it is Flash so I would assume there is at least one Flash outlet for watching.
As for Silverlight, I refuse to install Yet Another Program(tm) that I have to maintain, or cannot use with x browser, or x operating system, or has x problem.
At this point I have removed QuickTime and RealPlayer, only use Flash with FlashBlock in Firefox, and have the obligatory Sun Java plug-in. I am sure there is a way to remove Media Player as well. I use VLC Player and am happy with it, though it lacks a few codecs, so I just skip sites and files which require them. Hell, I have done without cable TV for two years, I am sure that missing some of these on-line videos will not kill me, either.
Though sites like Hulu use Flash well, there are far too many sites which require it, as an all Flash website. I cannot use those with OperaMini, and I despise visiting the resource-hogging sites on my laptop -- Flash most often causes the fan on my lapburner to fire up. I skip them.
And I skip sites which require Silverlight. Sorry, Microsoft, frankly you are a Johnny-come-lately for me. But I guess it does not matter since there are millions of people out there who will install it just to get what they want, not realizing what they really do not need.
Anyway, I am now rambling.
Paris, getting my lapburner to fire up and helping me realize what I want is not necessarily what I need.
Obama will care about regular people when he is one. So don't hold your breath. As USCIC with wads of cash ready for his reelection campaign why should he care about you. Oh, let me add that Microsoft was his #3 contributor behind Univ. of CA and Goldman Sachs. The next question is that with Google coming in the #4 spot, will he ditch his blackberry for an android? In short, no surprises then, business as usual.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
As per the Microsoft license agreement, I may not (1) work around any technical limitations. Therefore, if the fucking thing isn't working as expected, I'm not allowed to change my settings, because that would be working around a technical limitation. What asshat came up with that clause?
Fuck Microsoft. Fuck Obama for trying to force people to use proprietary Microsoft products.
I don't know which vendor is going to own up to this one, but right now, http://change.gov/newsroom/ look like this:
"Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists."
The front page isn't much better - it seems to be lacking CSS and graphics.
Actually, what is really pathetic is you apparently do not have the balls to put your name to your post. For some the issue may be the Evil Microsoft Empire(tm), but for others, which has been stated twice here, it is Yet Another Plugin(tm) to install, maintain, and potentially cock-up your Browser installation.
I am a little on the fence about a monopoly, frankly. The problem is that with so many different options and so many different sources, we run into Maintenance and Update Overload(tm) in that we have seven different programs from seven different vendors with seven different update cycles and seven different updater tasks running (some constantly) and seven different... well, I hope some see my point. But if you get it all from one vendor, say Microsoft, then all the updates come from One Source(tm).
Now, Secunia's PSI does a good job of helping with this, though. I certainly do not envy them the task of keeping up with the Massive Updates(tm) available for the programs monitored. Of course, I am sure a lot of them are automated, and so long as the vendors provide a simple interface for determining updates and downloads the program will Work As Expected(tm).
Paris, she has a simple interface that works as expected.
I don't care about who made the crap, the fact is that Silverlight is so flawed that RealPlayer almost seems secure by comparison. (Also, it's from MS).
"the general masses do not give a damn how what they are watching is being broadcast, just that it works and they can watch it."
Yep. The general masses generally don't care about maintenance issues, they don't care if their computers get massively infected by malware and recruited into botnets. What was your point again?
Nobody is claiming that the inauguration is ONLY being streamed via Silverlight - just the u$oft has released a press statement saying it will be via Silverlight. So what? This wasn't in any way a decision by Obama or his bunch. It's a f-ing advert by u$soft, that's all! Jeeze!
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