Democracy Player Is Dead, Long Live Miro 296
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? (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).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Actually, I switched back to VLC almost instantly. It's totally unusable and awfully bloated.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In terms o feature-ness, Miro allows you to create playlists, automatic watch lists, and integrates video searches from Google, Yahoo, and a couple others. It's also a bittorrent client for videos, though admittedly I haven't figured out how to use that feature. One thi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I never really got into it if only because I don't care to use my computer like a TV. Most of my major video downloads to directly to a MythTV b
Creepy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite a few "Democracy" experiments turned out quite well, especially when you compare the number of successful communist countries that turned out.. quite well...
Regarding the matter at hand, as the OP, i find it really scary that these guys felt the need to/were forced to replace the name "Democracy" because some people dont like what Mr Bush is doing. There are quite a few other democracies on this planet that are doing OK. The original greek democracy only included
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:2)
It turned out pretty weird though. When all the children in the community are raised communally, they all view each other as if they are biological brothers and sisters and don't really get attracted to each other. Most of them ended up marrying "outsiders".
Also:
"When we saw our first children in the playpen, hitting one another, or grabbing toys just for themselves, we were overcome with anxiety. What did it mean that even an education in communal life couldn't
Re:What communist countries? None have ever existe (Score:2)
You've never read Marx, have you? The work is not meant to be distributed equally. Really.
The proles do the work for the brains so the brains can relax and think big thoughts.
Problem is the proles don't like that.
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:What communist countries? None have ever existe (Score:2)
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:2)
You comments are cultural rather than rational. The whole idea that you don't want to work for the benefit of others is a standard lower-class American belief - that mindset will get you from "poor" to "upper middle class" in the USA (or at least provide comfort when you fail), so it's competitively advantageous for you to have it.
Other cultures promote different mindsets, many of which are also sustainable in practice. I don't know if there is a mindset that would work in a democratic communist system, bu
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Our idea of political debate is standing in an emp
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We cant even provide healthcare for our people, and we're in serious fucking debt and we refuse to tax the corporations that now have the highest dow jones ever... SOMETHING is serverely broken... and by something, i mean everything.
What a fucking twit. Currently we're running around 3 trillion in debt each year because of your precious health care and safety net in the form of Medicare and SocSec, but you never see that reported because our gov. is highly dishonest about the way it calculates debt.
Econ 101 asshole, so listen up. There are two primary types of accounting. The first is known as cash accounting. It's what you or I, or really, really small companies use. The second is known as accrual accounting. It's what every ma
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
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.
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.
Changing name... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yay for name changes (Score:2)
Re:Yay for name changes (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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)
I'm not saying the skepticism is justified, it just seems to be how the rest of the world sees the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is the lack of accountability that makes a benevolent dictatorship an impossibility. But without accountability, democracy doesn't work either.
You need independent information sources, as well as legal checks and balances, to make democracy work. If you don't have that, it really doesn't matter that much how you choose your leaders: you're just being given a choice of dictators.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the optimistic view.
It seems to me that maintaining a functional system of accountability for any official of the federal government in a country of more than 300 million people may be impossible - especially if you have an economy structured the way the US economy is.
Re: (Score:2)
The early years of this decade were a low point in government accountability in living memory. But I think that's changing. The blogosphere, as ugly and unwashed as it may be, is allowing people to bypass the mainstream media gatekeepers who are far, far too cozy with the people they are covering.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He does do a lot of that, I have to admit. Good catch.
Yeah, I don't think you're really listening... (Score:2)
First off, as I'm sure you're aware, there are some in the left who are against almost everything Bush proposes exactly because Bush proposes it. Same with the right and Clinton in the 90's. That said, most of those who were against the Iraq war from the beginning (including many conservatives who had n
Re: (Score:2)
Youre like that kid in grade school who would egg someone to on to fight and if they didnt you called them a coward. It wasnt convincing them and its not convincing now.
Not to mention, Iraq shows us that toppling a dictator doesnt automatically result in a western-style democracy by default.
Abstract? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Man, why do people have to be so mean, using all those facts and logic to crush his way of believing.
Re: (Score:2)
Sssssshhhhhhhhhh... don't ruin the surprise that English isn't the world's only language.
Assuming (and it's not a particularly big assumption) that you are referring to 'Americans' thinking that.. I think they know.
Since when do American speak English? They use all sorts of strange words that us real English don't (e.g. soccer instead of football), and to make matters worse, the mis-use other words (the pavement is not something you drive on, not something you drive on)...;p
I'm joking, but whoever it was who said that the USA and the UK were two countries divided by a common language had a point.
And in Japanese... (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Stalin killed people 1920s - 1960s, though, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
This number ignores WWII related deaths!
As it should. But, have you compared Bush to Stalin over time? According to the Arab press, Bush has already beaten Saddam Hussein for bloodyhandedness - once you adjust the figures for relative time in power. Stalin was in power for decades, and Bush only has eight years to get his slaughtering done. If you divide both by the days in office, what happens to the numbers then? How does Bush score on a level playing field?
There's no such thing as an "inappropriate" comparison. The results of the proces
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't as if B was democracy and D was the rules at my apartment's swimming pool.
-Peter
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't like me or my methods and I call myself a kumquat, do you suddenly find the term "kumquat" distasteful? If not, then why does Bush make you dislike "democracy"?
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.
Re: (Score:2)
People are too quick to get a good word as tainted (Score:2)
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It seems contradictory when all the left wing politicians are rich. The class of the people don't denote the political affiliation of them. You need to define further into the classes before you can get close and even they it is a generalization. There are sure to be people who would prove you wrong.
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.
Re:The player isn't the problem, whatever it's cal (Score:2)
Did they do a trademark search? (Score:2)
democracy is left wing? (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
new name could have been worse... (Score:2)
I'll get my hat... kthxbye
how's the linux version nowdays? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is also another case of an urban legend posing as a lesson in... something. Check Snopes, please:
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp [snopes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
So the vulgar way of saying sh*t is Scheiße - this is considered vulgar, but not as bad as in the U.S. So, in the US you might discipline your child for saying sh*t in Germany Scheiße might only get junior a bad look.
Mist is even less vulgar. Sort of like saying dung or manure. A "Mist Haufen" is a dung heap. But, Mist is still used as an expletive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's weird I grew up speaking both English and German and I have the hardest time translating between the two. When I speak in German I think in German and same goes for English. So, whenever I try to translate I get really hung up the feelings certain words evoke in me and I have a hard time just picking the obvious word, like crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm really starting to wonder if these posts are anti-GPLv3 FUD, or the result of misunderstandings created by previous anti-GPLv3 FUD...
This is very simple: If you are not personally planning on redistributing GPLv3 software in such a way that the recipient can't modify it, you don't need to worry about problems from the license. In fact, as an end user you should welcome GPLv3 because it defends you better from patent problems.
Re: (Score:2)
There are other countries where democracy works great. Smaller countries, in Europe, with proportional representation, where a couple hundred thousand votes for a political party gets them multiple members of parliament.
Here in the USA though, I have a sneaking suspicion that our "you can have 49% of millions of voters and still get nothing" system of elections thwarts the whole idea of functional democracy pretty effectively.