Slashdot Log In
Democracy Player Is Dead, Long Live Miro
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jul 18, 2007 09:01 AM
from the lesson-in-marketing-101 dept.
from the lesson-in-marketing-101 dept.
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.""
Related Stories
[+]
Miro Turns 1.0 81 comments
nicholasreville writes "We have just released version 1.0 of our internet video application Miro. Miro is a free and open-source (GPL) RSS aggregator and video player with BitTorrent support and a built-in guide of video feeds. It's created by the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is devoted to making online video more open and has received grants from Mozilla and Mitch Kapor, among others. In contrast to closed, proprietary delivery systems, Miro embraces open standards and DRM-free video. We build this software because we think it's absolutely crucial that internet video have an open technology foundation. We don't need more gatekeepers. Miro was featured previously on Slashdot."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Any reason to switch from VLC or BS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Any reason to switch from VLC or BS? (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Actually, I switched back to VLC almost instantly. It's totally unusable and awfully bloated.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Creepy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What communist countries? None have ever existed. (Score:3, Interesting)
There has never been any modern communist government in the past few hundred years.
A real communist country WOULD BE a democracy; in fact if you take democracy to it's logical course (where everyone has a say) you inevitably end up with a communist state.
A true communist country would have
- A democratically elected government with 100% transparency
- 100% nationalized economy where all w
Re:What communist countries? None have ever existe (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, people confuse communism with dictatorship and/or totalitarianism when really, they are mutually exclusive.
There has never been any modern communist government in the past few hundred years.
A real communist country WOULD BE a democracy; in fact if you take democracy to it's logical course (where everyone has a say) you inevitably end up with a communist state.
It doesn't matter what "real" communism is. Every attempt at Communism has turned into vicious totalitarianism. "Real" Communism is an abstraction. The fact is, there is something about either the Communist system, or the people who are attracted to Communism, that makes any real world attempt at "real" Communism impossible.
It would be kind of like I started a philosophy called "Chocolatism" that said "If you eat nothing but chocolate, you will live forever"... Then, when people ate nothing but chocolate a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, can you name one Communist country that wasn't totalitarian? You said they're 'mutually exclusive' however I have yet to see an instance where a Communist country was NOT totalitarian.
That is my whole point. Communism is the antithesis of capitalism, which are both economic ideologies, not political ones. Totalitarianism is the antithesis of democracy, which are political ideologies, not economic ones. But the general public is always grouping these things together when really they have nothing to do
Re:Creepy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Bush and friends have done to the word "democracy" what Stalin and comrades have done to the words "socialism" and "communism"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Our idea of political debate is standing in an emp
"Democracy" is frequently used inappropriately (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Democracy and freedom are not the same thing.
True on both counts, but not for the reasons you cite.
> You can have a democracy or representative democracy and have a society that is all but a police state.
Explain. Just because a country like the ex-GDR called itself democratic didn't make it so. It is not about what a country CALLS itself, but how it FUNCTIONS. If its branches function along truly democratic processes that
Re:Creepy (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly, before Hitler adopted it for his own nefarious uses, the swastika was seen as a symbol of luck in the west.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Creepy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Changing name... (Score:2)
Yay for name changes (Score:2)
Re:Yay for name changes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Democracy's New Baggage (Score:4, Interesting)
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:
Republic! (Score:2, Insightful)
A Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting for "what's for dinner".
(hmm, I wonder how you relate a republic to two wolves and a sheep...)
Re:Republic! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
It may well be nonsense to say that direct democracy is awkward for large group
Let me explain (Score:3, Insightful)
The media player itself is the product of a non-profit which has a political, although non-partisan mission: "to build tools and services that give people more ways to engage in their culture."
So it seems to me that this story is very much about the issue of power in a democratic society. Naturally, whenever this comes up, the people who like to make a distinction between a "republ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy has been dragged through the linguistic mud already.
Re: (Score:2)
Abstract? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And in Japanese... (Score:3, Informative)
Miro? (Score:2)
I see absolutely no problem with trademarks here.
Re: (Score:2)
Judged by who you friends are (Score:2, Insightful)
Particularly sad, since neither one practiced either doctrine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush's policies are indefensible. Every human life is precious. But for the l
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Judged by who you friends are (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
Bizarre? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I wonder if the foundation... (Score:3, Insightful)
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... (Score:2)
And "Miro", in Spanish is, of course, a famous modern painter [wikipedia.org]... Not exactly very well known for being "easy" to understand.
People are too quick to get a good word as tainted (Score:2)
Accurate name? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except the leaders of left wing movements are almost never working or middle class...Teddy Kennedy, John Edwards, John Kerry.
You're claiming that John Edwards isn't middle class? He's from a solid working class childhood. Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]:
Edwards was born on June 10, 1953 to Wallace Reid Edwards and Catharine Juanita "Bobbie" Wade in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved several times during Edwards' childhood, eventually settling in Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked as a textile mill floor worker, eventually promoted to supervisor; his mother worked as a postal letter carrier when his father left his job.[2] Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He first attended Clemson University and later transferred to North Carolina State University. Edwards graduated with a bachelor's degree in textile technology in 1974 from North Carolina State University, and later earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), both with honors.
Anyways, the democrat politicians you mention aren't leaders in the sense you are talking about. Left-wingers don't go and do whatever they say. They are more like public servants.
If you check the political opinions of the working and middle class you usually find that they tend to be more conservative.
That's not true. There is a broad spectrum of political opinion in the working and middle
The player isn't the problem, whatever it's called (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
how's the linux version nowdays? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)