Democracy Player Is Dead, Long Live Miro

MrSpin writes "Democracy Player has relaunched today as Miro. Developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro aims to make online video "as easy as watching TV", while at the same time ensuring that the new medium remains accessible to everyone, through its support for open standards. The open-source application combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. But why the name change? According to last100, who have published a full review and guide to Miro: "When Democracy Player launched back in February 2006, the feedback received was that the name evoked different, yet equally negative responses. For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project, and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. In contrast, the new name is purposely abstract.""

Any reason to switch from VLC or BS?

Is there any reason to use Miro rather than VLC or BS Player? These seem to handle everything I've encountered.

Re:Any reason to switch from VLC or BS?

According to the article, Miro's content guide is one of it's strengths -- making it more than just a player.

Miro's content guide is far better than the equivalent video podcast directory in iTunes. Not only does Miro list over 1,500 channels but it's also better organized, with content filtered by popularity, editor picks, genre, tags, and language. There's even a section dedicated to HD video.

Still, I have a hard time imagining how a good content buide is better than having google seaarch behind it when looking for content (as youtube does).

Creepy

Creepy that so many people associate "Democracy" with bad things. Actually scares me...

Re:Creepy

Creepy that so many people associate "Democracy" with bad things. Actually scares me...

Well, Bush and friends have done to the word "democracy" what Stalin and comrades have done to the words "socialism" and "communism"

"Democracy" is frequently used inappropriately

Everytime you hear crap about "saving our democracy" you ought to cringe. Democracy and freedom are not the same thing. You can have a monarchy and have a free society. You can have a democracy or representative democracy and have a society that is all but a police state. The abuse most commonly occurs when leftists criticize actions by regimes like the Bush Administration.

Truth is, America was a lot freer when we weren't even a democracy in name. When our founders created our country, only 1/3 of the federal body politic was directly elected. We had the lowest taxes, fewest regulations, our federal civil service was actually serving, rather than ruling, the people and federal police powers were few and far between. Today, well, speaks for itself.

I'm glad they changed the name. Their project has a lot more to do with freedom than democracy.

Re:Creepy

Essentially, the Bush administration has twisted and perverted the term. "Spreading Democracy" now means "We're gonna invade your country and enforce our will."

Similarly, before Hitler adopted it for his own nefarious uses, the swastika was seen as a symbol of luck in the west.

Re:Creepy

At this point, I'm personally willing to suspend Godwins law for discussions about American politics. The more that people look at fascism and the USA next to each other, the more likely it is that we'll be able to fix some of the disturbing similarities.

Changing name...

Makes a bigger difference than we realize. Sort of makes you wonder how many other smaller projects don't make it because of a poor name. I hate coming up with a name for anything I work on... Heck there is times when I sit and stare at the screen because I can't think of a good name (that will get me through code review). -Wes

Yay for name changes

DP to Miro, Gaim to Pidgin, Beryl and Compiz rejoining... what next? GCC becomes Gnucco?

Re:Yay for name changes

GCC becomes Gnucco?

GuCCi would be a far more fashionable name!

Democracy's New Baggage

... and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration.

I hope, for the sake of everything that I believe in, this is a false statement. It's sad that I have to go on living knowing that while I was alive a man was elected president of my country (twice!) & in that time, he was able to put a foul taste in your mouth upon saying "democracy."

I guess we can still say that the core ideas of democracy are good, that only awful men with awful goals and intentions used democracy to do wrong. I guess today Marxism sounds like an idea with potential though historically men like Joseph Stalin & Mao Zedong have given it a social stigma that the terrible things they did under its name are inherent and must occur when the idea is put into practice.

I hope the rest of the world is not convinced that democracy comes hand in hand with the actions of the United States of America today. Hopefully other countries [wikipedia.org] will become model democracies for the rest of the world.

I hope the theory of democracy is resilient enough to withstand the current administration and that it survives as a concept that can be taught to children as the model of the most fair form of government. I also hope that the rest of the world aspires to become democratic--as has been the popular progression for quite sometime. Ironically, we are tarnishing the image of a system that we hope the Iraqi people to embrace--quite possibly the reason that effort fails.

The history books will indeed be interesting to read when I am a withered old man.

I like this quote from Winston Churchill [wikiquote.org] that explains while democracy is not perfect, it is the best we've got:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Re:Republic!

If you studied predator to prey relationships, you'd probably recognize that two wolves and a sheep scenario as non-sustainable in any case. You probably need a wolf to sheep ratio of something like 1 : 10 or 1:20. If what we're talking about is one wolf and ten sheep voting on what's for dinner, the wolf is SOL unless he learns to eat grass.

So this explanation of why the republic subtype of democracy works better than the direct democracy subtype doesn't work.

There are two reasons that do explain the value of a democratic republic. The first is the impracticality of deciding on everything by a direct vote. The second is that we each play different roles on different issues: we aren't always the sheep or always the wolf in every single question. If we were always in the sheep class, our rational interest would say throw wolves to the, er.. wolves.

But the reality is that we're all minorities. Maybe it's the people we like to sleep with. Maybe its the fact we like to collect guns. Or look at dirty pictures. Or have heretical ideas. Pure majoritarianism means everybody sooner or later feels the hand of tyranny.

Our democratic republic works because of a rough and approximate egalitarianism, in which we can see ourselves as belonging to the wolf class or the sheep class. That was the genius of FDR, who was considered a class traitor by many. He realized that a society which was polarized into wolves and sheep had to end up in one kind of tyranny or another, most likely something like what happened in the Soviet Union: a tyranny of a small set of erstwhile sheep. A "social democracy" is not necessarily one of radical egalitarianism, it is one in which no person is for practical purposes relegated to perpetual sheep status.

Abstract?

I wouldn't call the name abstract, as miro is Spanish for "I watch." Seems perfectly suitable to me.

Abstract?

"Miro" is spanish for "see" or "watch" so makes sense. Why say it's abstract?

Miro?

You mean the german Miro (http://www.miro.com) that now produces computer displays, that formerly produced multimedia hardware for computers (http://www.mirosupport.de/)?
I see absolutely no problem with trademarks here.

Judged by who you friends are

So now Bush has tarnished Democracy as badly as Stalin tarnished socialism.

Particularly sad, since neither one practiced either doctrine.

Re:Judged by who you friends are

The highest estimate for civilian deaths in Iraq that I've heard is 600,000. If we consider the existence of the war in Afganistan, that implies that we *could* get to an estimate 1,000,000 using the method you describe.

Does it play nice with GPL 3.0?

How are the data streams -- or metadata sent to/from the player -- impacted by GPL 3.0? I know the GPL 3.0 has provisions regarding web services and sending / receiving data. Is this an issue?

Bizarre?

For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project, and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration.

Not 'bizarre' at all. Actually I and everyone I know expected exactly those reactions, and were therefore puzzled by the name choice of 'Democracy Player'. It was just a half-step better then 'Freedom Player' (to make the comparison to 'Freedom Fries' even clearer, not that there is any need).

The project itself is a nice idea. Hopefully the misguided name choice didn't set it back too much.

What's in a name?

Names seem to matter as much as the product itself. My dad designed and built something for Westinghouse that was going to Germany named the MIST. I suppose it was an acronym for something; but upon arrival in Germany, it had its name changed to something that wasn't offensive. I don't speak German, so I don't know what that would be misinturpreted as. Another naming failure was with the Chevy Nova. Nova, in espaniol, means "it doesn't go". I'm sure this was just an over site by GM. But the cars didn't sell well in Latin America and other Latin countries.

I wonder if the foundation...

has cleared their trademark with Joan Miro's [wikipedia.org] estate?

If not, queue intellectual property lawsuits in 5..4..3..

It's happened before. [sfgate.com]

What is funny...

Is that "miro" in French means someone who has very low vision.

And "Miro", in Spanish is, of course, a famous modern painter [wikipedia.org]... Not exactly very well known for being "easy" to understand.

The name I voted for...

I really liked the "go to hell big media player". but the developers did not think it was a good idea to start out beating the bushes looking for snakes.

Miro is

Spanish and Japanese for Watch, oddly.

People are too quick to get a good word as tainted

Now they feel "democracy" is tainted too, just because bush tried to use it as a veil. Now you cant use that word that easily. Its just stupid. If some jerk comes and tries to exploit the word "good", what will happen ?

Accurate name?

For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project...

Uh, isn't that exactly what this project is? Don't get me wrong, I'm a lefty. If you have something small scale and open to anyone, then by definition there is going to be more working and middle class voices on it. The traditional media that requires a lot of capital to produce and distribute, such as newspapers, television, and radio, will, by definition, be the voice of its wealthy owners.

The player isn't the problem, whatever it's called

The problem isn't the lack of a good PLAYER. The problem is the lack of good CONTENT.

So how about we focus instead on getting some free resources for the production of decent content? Right now, there is a VERY sharp divide between professional studio productions (that are heavily DRM'ed and can only be accessed by paying $ at sites like iTunes) and crappy home videos/video podcasts that look like they're made in a junior high AV room.

Murray's Rule

Any videoplayer with "democratic" in the title isn't.

ignatius

Did they do a trademark search?

Miro happens to be the name of the company that started the Mambo Server open-source CMS project. Since I know they existed before today, they might have a good claim to stop the Miro player from using the Miro name. Software trademarks seem to go across many types of software - Firefox had to change its name to Firefox from Firebird because of the open-source relational database called Firebird. Seeing as though both Miro's Mambo and the Miro player deliver content to users, it would seem they are more related than a database and a web browser.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but people really need to do good trademark searches.

Crash!

Democracy is good. The player is dead though because it kept crashing all the time. And people in forums had the same problem. I wish the reincarnation is better

In a world filled with youtubes...

Will Miro catch on? I was playing around with Democracy/Miro a couple of weeks ago. Its looking pretty slick. But it seems to me that its only real advantage over youtube and its clones is its Bittorrent syndication ability. Yet I had a hard time finding any content through the client that was actually served as torrents. I suppose the ecosystem needs to evolve still, but it was discouraging to me.

PBS

Democracy Player makes me think of PBS. Where sometimes you'll find quality programming, but then you have to put up with all that other stuff the rest of the public SHOULD enjoy. The only time I ever catch myself watching PBS is when NOVA, or some weird British Sit-Com is on.
 
I don't have cable so I may consider putting together a set top computer just for this purpose.

democracy is meh anyway

I don't travel so I really have no gauge on the rest of the world, but things are pretty depressing here in the states. Democracy really only works when you have an educated and politically active populace. I look around and wonder if that very criteria is a pipe dream. There are bad ideas all around me. Irrational fears and prejudices. Commonplace superstitions that would be recognized as neurotic in any objective context. An unfortunate lack of civic pride or sense of community, especially in contrast to some of the groups I see gather online. Ofcourse it isn't an American phenomenom, but it sure has reached some heights in this country. More depressing considering our relative prosperity.

While I have no experience with this software, I have to say that when I hear the name Democracy Player, I think of drooling masses. I think of misguided liberalism and hypocritical conservatism. I think of the flower power hippies that didn't really accomplish anything. And that's not even considering all the baggage the Bush administration has added to words like "democracy" and "freedom." Yea, Miro is way better. The less I'm reminded of the clusterfuck or real world politics the better. You know, just long enough for the aliens to land and finally sort things out, either ground us like children or annihilate us outright. The people just aren't up to the task.

democracy is left wing?

I'm sure some looser right wing republican troll will mod this down, but...

Since when is democracy a left wing idea in America? Wasn't that what we were trying to do in Iraq, bring democracy to Iraq?

WTF!

Torrent support

I wonder if they fixed the horrible torrent support. It always starts fast then bogs down and slows to a crawl. What makes it worse is the inability to see the actual torrent peers information to see if it's a problem with the torrent network or something closer to home.

a video viewer for the blind ?

well, in french the word "miro"means "nearly blind"...what a name for a video viewer ;-)

new name could have been worse...

it could have been the Gnu Improved Multimedia Player...

I'll get my hat... kthxbye

how's the linux version nowdays?

I haven't used DP since it originaly started (and I have to say it didn't sound either right- or left-wing. to me it was just plain stupid). Does the linux version stil suck? It was pretty unusable back then.

Democracy Player is junk

Democracy Player is junk. There is nothing but crap content (except for youtube which is mostly crap) and is bloatware.

a bi-partisan issue

the name evoked different, yet equally negative responses

At least Republicans and Democrats can agree on one thing: Democracy is bad.

Vote 3rd-party in 2008!

ummm... we are not a democracy

hate to burst bubbles, but to the miss informed the U.S. is NOT a democracy.
have you all forgotten your history lessons.
I looked it up to confirm it with the world fact book which list us as :
Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition.
even on wiki.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stated [wikipedia.org]

as you can see we are a republic, the democracy we practice as a matter
of tradition is so we don't get stuck with a king or dictator for life(only 8
years max). any country can have a bad leader we just don't get stuck with one for too long.

democracy in software is good. because the software can become the sum of a collective knowledge.

democracy's in in politics are usually very week, because it becomes the sum collective bullshit.
(note: the bigger it is the less stuff gets done)
hence the reason why we like to spread it to other countries.
Which is why other countrys see us as the democracy spreaders. and it gives them a big distaste.

a thing to think about it that while that iraq is a developing democracy
and Afghanistan is a islamic republic.

Afghanistan had a leader immediately(president Hamid Karzai, i always seem to remember that kwel hat he wears),
and is almost self sufficient in its public works/schools/security (though it'll be a while before we totally leave there,
example: still in south korea) there major current problem is the drugs because its there primary cash crop,
which they are trying to train farmers to switch to alternative crops(this will be a while). (note: that not every one wants drugs)
Iraq on the other hand is trying to develop a democracy, Has anything improved????
Do you know who is there leader? What is there cash crop... OIL? (last i checked every one has fought over that since WWI)


Another thing to think about.....
how many senators can you name? i think i can name about 20
any major changing policy's come from it? I can think of several.
how many members of the house can you name? i think i know 2
any major changing policy's come from it? I know there are some things(i just cant think of any)

Which one is based members based on population again?
Which one is more effective?

The house is there as a check and balance for the senate.

Usable without FireFox?

I was interested in installing DP when I first learnt about it a couple months ago, but held back on installing it as Ubuntu insisted on installing FireFox along with it, which I assume is what DP used to browse Youtube and whatnot. Installing FF, however, interferes with the browser I normally use. Does Miro change this dependency? If so, I would install it in a snap.

Good or bad?

The comments above make me sad. Is it really to the point that people convince themselves that the world would've been better off with Saddam in power? I understand that there has been a lot of death, and things haven't played out well. I would definitely say that the situation isn't ideal, but who are we kidding? At the heart of the matter, Saddam broke terms with the UN, and the provisions in the resolutions required an UN co-ordinated effort to remove Saddam from power. The rest of the UN fell flat on their face, and didn't follow through with the resolution that they signed. Sure it makes the countries involved look really stupid, and sure I don't condone the killing of innocent citizens, but surely people haven't fooled themselves into thinking that Saddam was in the right and Bush was in the wrong!

Speaking of Democracy Player

There is a video portal YUR.tv [www.yur.tv] that launched a coouple days ago that gives away the shares of the public company behind it in exchange for good content.

That is what I would call democracy (or crazy) (or stupid)

So the War on DRM is over?

Mission Accomplished :p

"easy as watching TV"

I don't think that watching TV is easy. There is all that mental preparation to counteract the expected fall in brain activity due to high levels of bogon absorption. Then the weeks of rehabilitation after watching TV, which should be booked in advance to ensure no lasting effects. No, watching TV is definitely not an easy matter.

Names aside, Miro is a step in the right direction

I like to watch tv online. In fact, I prefer it greatly over regular cable tv. That may be because I don't get cable, true, but why has it taken so long to move in this direction? The ability to have viewer-specific advertising during each show should be making networks salivate. There's all those people out there like me who surf around constantly to places like peekvid, alluc.org, cinecast.us, sidereel.com (results catalogues at http://www.mymindwanders.com/blog/?cat=13 [mymindwanders.com]) etc etc. for their favorite shows... why not embrace it? One of the features I like the most about Miro is the ability to search selected online TV and video websites like veoh, youtube, dailymotion. However, Miro lacks the ability to stream those videos - you must download them - which is a big turn-off. Also, has anyone noticed it takes up over 130k of system memory? Other than those two draw-backs, I am thoroughly impressed, however.

Re:Liberal agenda

the reason is that many liberal/left wing organizations have grabbed the term democratic and placed their own meaning behind this term when in fact these meanings may not be the opinion of the mainstream american who can't be bothered with differentiating