ATTENTION: The Blog Has Moved to danlynch.org/blog
This is just a note to make sure everyone knows, I haven't decided whether to delete the old content from here or not yet but there will definitely be nothing new at this address. I mentioned in my last post I was gonna move to adventuresinopensource.com and that URL will work but it's a bit long. The new home will be danlynch.org/blog
See you over there, thanks
Dan :)
Hey folks, this is just a quick post to update you about some plans l have for this site in the New Year. I want to take this blog and other projects like Linux Outlaws on to bigger and better things this year. I should start with a little of back story for anyone who doesn't know.
Recently though someone pointed out to me that I'm writing about open source and posting on a closed source platform in Blogger. This came as something of a shock but it's true. I hadn't even thought about it, the blog just grew organically but now I figure it's time to move it to Wordpress and self host. I already own the domain adventuresinopensource.com and at the moment it just points here. So I can setup a site on my own web server and relaunch this blog for 2009 quite easily. I want to make a nice custom design and do this blogging thing seriously, not in my writing style, I don't think I could be serious for that long but in general principle. Get down to more regular reviews, updates, opinion pieces, maybe interviews, videos and so on, who knows. I'd also like to design a decent logo for Adventures In Open Source and make a bit of a brand out of it, as much as I hate that term and marketing in general I think it's time. I'm not great with graphic design so I may be calling on friends to help with that but shhhh ;)
Back when the iPlayer was first launched in December of 2007 there was only a Windows XP desktop application, it didn't even work with Vista or Internet Explorer 7 which obviously upset some Mac and Linux users. However, Rome wasn't built in a day and the BBC duely managed to fix things by offering content to all platforms through a Flash-based web interface similar to YouTube, which most users already knew and understood. The main difference between the web and desktop versions was you could only stream and watch videos on the web but the actual application was able to download the files and save them to your computer. Unfortunately the saved files are encumbered with DRM (boo hiss!), again for legal reasons and the files self-destruct after 7 days, it all sounds very Mission Impossible but there we go. Now that Adobe have released their AIR platform for Linux and Mac we can all get in on the action and try it out at least, I decided to see how easy it was to install and use the iPlayer Desktop on Linux. 
In order to download and install the iPlayer Desktop you first have to agree to become what they're calling a "labs tester", don't worry there's no injections or drug trials that I know of. In reality this doesn't involve much more than going to http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer/labs and clicking the pink button which says "I want to be a Labs tester". After that you're just taken back to the main iPlayer home page, there's no prompting to enter an email address or any other details which makes the whole sign up process seem a little redundant to me. Perhaps it's a legal thing so they can say you knew this was testing software if anything goes wrong, I'm not sure. Anyway, after this you will notice there's now a download button below the video window when you visit a program page on the iPlayer website. This doesn't appear unless you're a Lab's tester and clicking on it begins the install process for the desktop app. The installation process itself is refreshingly simple and worked very well for me on Linux Mint 6.
First up Adobe AIR is installed for you and then a pop out window takes you through the rest of the steps. You're prompted to accept license terms and sign your life away as with all proprietary software but it doesn't take long. I've recorded every single step of the installation process which you can follow in the slide show linked below if you like. One thing I did find strange is you're prompted to accept the terms and conditions and the publisher field says UNKNOWN in loud capital letters, where the system access field says UNRESTRICTED, complete with alarming red crosses. I'm not sure the reason for this but it's a bit off putting. The unrestricted access thing I suppose is to be expected but why it doesn't say BBC as the publisher I have no clue.
Within a few minutes I was greeted with the working iPlayer Desktop and it was already downloading the program I'd selected Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, which I heartily recommend to you though perhaps it's not for the easily offended. The program downloaded pretty quickly and I was able to watch it fine within the iPlayer itself but not in any external programs. On my system it created a folder inside my main /home/dan/Videos directory called "BBC iPlayer", you can see from the screen shot that this contains another folder called "repository" and if you fish around in there you can find the raw video files. They appear to be standard Mpeg4 files but you can't play them in Totem, VLC or anything else. This must be the DRM earning it's money I guess. Interestingly the little intro clips for each channel contained in the "cache" folder are clearly not protected as they play fine in Totem. I played the Charlie Brooker video in the iPlayer and it works well enough, you can switch to full screen and the controls are pretty simple but the video quality isn't stunning. Of course there are bandwidth concerns and file size issues for the BBC to wrestle with I suppose but I had hoped the picture would be better than the Flash version on the website, to my eyes it wasn't but that's just an observation.
Having used the program for a couple of weeks now and downloaded a fair few items, I have to say it's pretty well written. I'd heard all kinds of horror stories about how unstable Adobe AIR was on Linux but so far they've proven unfounded. The iPlayer has never crashed, frozen or gotten up to any other shenanigans on me yet, touch wood. There are a couple of things however that I don't like. For instance the program will launch itself every time you log into your machine and pop up in the middle of your desktop in a "look mum no hands" kind of fashion. Clicking the X in the top corner to close it simply minimises the program to the system tray and it's still running, you have to right-click on the tray icon and choose "exit" to actually banish it. I suspect the reason for this is quite cunning as the iPlayer relies on P2P file sharing technology to distribute it's large video files. This is the same supposedly evil technology the likes of the MPAA would have you believe should be eradicated before it destroys all that is good and holy. That's a rant for another day but I believe the reason the iPlayer always wants to be running is to seed and upload any videos you have on your system to other active users. If it's Peer-To-Peer then it must do right? The iPlayer uses Kontiki as the file sharing back end and this has proved controversial in some quarters, not least with Internet Service Providers who complain it will use too much of their bandwidth. None of this really bothers me and I have no proof the iPlayer opens by default for this reason but I think it's pretty likely. I also think users should be told this more clearly up front. I don't have any problem at all with the principle, I understand how P2P works but it could adversely affect users on slow connections who don't have the same understanding.
If I'm honest I wasn't expecting the iPlayer application to work very well on Linux but I was totally wrong, it really does it's job well from a technical perspective. It's good to see Linux is now supported as fully as any other platform but I think we have Adobe to thank for that more than anyone else, had they not released AIR for Linux then I suspect the only penguins we'd see anywhere near the iPlayer would be accompanied by a David Attenborough voice-over. I'm impressed with the technology even if I'm not overly keen on the DRM aspects, the lack of any kind of subscription option at the least for overseas users and of course the closed-source nature of it all. I think the software has been very well developed and the BBC technical team deserve credit for this, hopefully it will continue to evolve and improve. I'd like to see the option to subscribe to shows and be notified of new episodes almost like a video podcast. Technically it shouldn't be that hard to do with RSS feeds and it would be a great addition. So if you're on Linux and you live in the UK I suggest you try out the iPlayer and see what you think, you can let me know your thoughts in the comments. It's certainly worth a look whatever your feelings on DRM and the other issues, having the option to use this software on Linux and being considered equally has to be a good sign in the long run.
Hey Folks, been a while since I updated you on my open source shenanigans but there is something Linux related that I'd like to tell you about. Now first off apologies to those International readers who don't live in either the US or the UK because this may not be of much interest to you. Feel free to move along and mutter under your breath about my small minded English ways if you like but I thought this was an interesting development. That well known online retailing behemoth Amazon has finally released a version of their mp3 music download service for the UK. It's been available in the US for some time but we finally get a chance to try it on these shores. As I alluded to before it hasn't been rolled out any other countries yet as far as I know and I can only assume this is because of licensing issues in different regions, that and the recording industry still having it's head up it's ass when it comes to the Internet. It seems to me that the Internet is a truly global market place and it should be treated as such, it's not as if there are extra shipping costs if I order a download from China or somewhere instead of the UK. Many companies are clinging to their old business models and even fighting change through the courts and the likes of the RIAA. It's not going away guys sorry, you'll have to deal with it. The genie is well and truely out of the bottle now so why not give us legal avenues to buy your music without DRM and make some money out of it instead of bitching and crying over the past.
Being inherently pretty cheap I noticed there was a promotion on offering quite a lot of decent albums for £3 each (at the time of writing it's still on so get over there quick). They all come as 256kbps mp3 files without any DRM as I've mentioned but the really surprising thing for me was the quality of the Linux support. I was a bit apprehensive at first when asked to install some software called Amazon Mp3 Downloader, I thought to myself "why do I need some software just to download a few files?" and it all smelt a little too much like iTunes for my liking, I hate lock ins... unless they're in pubs which of course I approve of. I made some enquiries and was told that you don't have to have the software to download but the advantage is it makes automating the process easier and you can pause and resume downloads. I decided to install it and see how it went.
The truly pleasing thing as a Linux user was to be offered supported packages for a variety of distributions. As you can see from screenshot they have packages prebuilt for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE. This is refereshing and it seems that Linux support hasn't been treated as an afterthought like it is by so many companies, if it's even considered at all. Sure this doesn't cover all the Linux distributions out there by any stretch of the imagination but it's still a good selection of arguably the most widely used distros I think.
I'm running Linux Mint at the moment and installing the Ubuntu 8.10 .deb package worked quickly and easily. A couple of clicks and it was done. It appeared on my menu with all the other Internet apps and it seems pretty well made I must say, simple but effective. It's a basic Gtk app which queues up your downloads and stores them in a folder within /home/#username/Music so they are immediately picked up by most media players. You simply download and open a .amz file from Amazon which works as a trigger for the download. I downloaded The Killers "Sam's Town" album in a couple of minutes and I've been really pleased with the quality and service. I've even been back and bought another one of their £3 albums since and something tells me this won't be the last time. Overall I think Amazon have done a good job of supporting Linux users and it's really encouraging to see, does this mean we're finally a market large enough to warrent attention from retailers? I hope so, that has to be a positive thing.Howdy, something a little different for you today but I had to share this. As you may have read in previous posts I've been producing a podcast called the Software Freedom Law Show for the Software Freedom Law Center in New York. It's been a lot of fun to work on and as a true audio geek I love making it sound as good as I possibly can but it inadvertently led to some interesting computer modifications for me this week. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...
One morning I crawled out of my pit (bed) as usual and made my way downstairs to get some breakfast, on my way I passed the front door and saw some mail on the floor. One of the envelopes immediately caught my attention as it had been sent from Broadway, New York. Had I finally won that big part in Cats?? No sadly not but it in fact was a very nice thank you card from Bradley and Karen at the SFLC for helping them with their podcast. They also included a load of nice Free Software stickers such as a GNU, some SFLC and GPLv3 logos. I wasn't expecting this so it was all a very nice surprise. I also noticed that included in the set were some small see-through stickers with the SFLC logo on them. The logo is a key from a computer keyboard with the letters "frdm" on it to represent freedom. This got me thinking, always a dangerous occurrence and soon the smoke was coming from my ears.
Regular readers will know that earlier in the year I bought a Dell M1330 laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed, it's only ever had Linux or OpenSolaris (very briefly) installed on it and yet it still has a key on the keyboard proudly displaying the Windows logo (see pic to the right). All machines do these days it seems but this has never had Windows on it and it NEVER will. So how could I fix this? Looking at the SFLC logo it struck me that what I needed was a "frdm" key :D I already had the stickers so I set to work. If you want to do this yourself you'll need the following:
