Linux Version of Democracy Player Released

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."

Nice Summary!

[paulthomas]

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 summary that doesn't suck. This awful writeup belongs more on digg than on slashdot, in my opinion.

The name is accurate

[infoterror]

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

Re:Unfortunately, it's still buggy as hell...

[CarpetShark]

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 :)

Re:Nice Summary!

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

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.

Re:The name is accurate

[humina]

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!

RTFA

[cahiha]

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 flowing freely. When you lock people in to closed, proprietary services, you lose everything that makes the internet work.

  Television is moving online. Will it be the same narrow, top-down cultural stagnation that we see on traditional television? All the major media and computer companies are clamoring to control video online. If they succeed it will be a disaster.

  We don't have to spend years playing catch-up. Open-source and open- standards can lead this fight for the future of video online.

It's pretty sad when people invest a lot of work to counter commercialism, and even choose obvious and clear names ("Democracy player", "participatoryculture.org"), and people like you still don't get it and heap sarcasm on the project.

How clearly do you need to have things spelled out for you in order for you to absorb the information? Or have you watched so many Pepsi commercials that you have just switched off completely?

Re:more like Democrack Player

[cahiha]

Because YouTube and Google are commercial sites that host the content with commercial motives in mind and with commercial constraints on their operations. They are free right now because those companies want to grab a big chunk of market share and prevent the kind of democratic, distributed infrastructure from appearing that Democracy player is intended to give you.

Democracy player is an attempt at letting anybody host and distribute video without having YouTube or Google-like bandwidth at their disposal.

I'm sorry if you don't get why this might be important.

Maybe it will help if you think a little about IM services. The reason why we have AOL and MSN and all those other centralized commercial services that play poorly with FOSS, that are easy to listen in on, and that impose all sorts of restrictions is not technical, it's because those services managed to grab market share quickly, before a distributed IM infrastructure could take hold. If it hadn't been for that historical accident, IM would probably be more like E-mail today, with tens of thousands of interoperable hosts and open protocols.

People would like Internet video streaming to be more like E-mail services than like IM services: distributed and open.

Re:Does it mean anthing that...

[DrGalaxy]

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 realistic by focusing on Windows and Mac computers because they are more commonly used by content producers and consumers.