Port 25 - Communications from the open source community at Microsoft

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1. john sonderegger said:

   You guys are sooo sucky.
   
   I'm supposed to watch a wmv file on my open-source box?
   
   As I'm using Ubuntu on a mac mini, I'm constrained software ported for PPC.  

   posted at 06:26PM 04/06/2006
2. Azrael said:

   As I noted in the other entry mplayer
   http://www.mplayerhq.hu
   is able to play wmvs and is available for pretty much any platform, including Linux PPC.
   Unfortunately, due to a disagreement between the mplayer project and Debian a while back, a compiled mplayer is not in the apt-get tree (the same tree Ubuntu uses) so you will need to install it manually.

   posted at 08:24PM 04/06/2006
3. watercooler said:

   Well, MS doesn't like to share much.  Yes, you can view WMV and WMA in both kaffeine and mplayer, but you've got to manually install them in almost any linux distro.  Also make sure you get the 'win32codec' package so for them.  I guess MS wants to make it as difficult as possible for any other OS or app to experience their file formats.
   Hey, it's for their best interest right?  Design their products for a 4-year old to easily use, and make it a PITA for the competition - that will make more people want to use windows, right?

   posted at 08:36PM 04/06/2006
4. anonymous coward said:

   Interesting...  Welcome to our site where we investigate open source!  To view this nifty video, however, you need to use a proprietary codec.
   
   Come on, guys..

   posted at 08:37PM 04/06/2006
5. GR said:

   Thanks Jackson! I'm trying to solve same problems - I have an AD as central directory and try to integrate all Debian/Linux wks. and FreeBSD servers to it. You are right - it's not that easy, at least it's not "just check this checkbox" procedure ;-)
   

   posted at 08:43PM 04/06/2006
6. Azrael said:

   watercooler:
   Gentoo will do an automated install--pretty much any _source based_ distro will.

   posted at 09:35PM 04/06/2006
7. hackysack said:

   Perhaps you could start with a quick overview of some configuration in which an AD server handles the PAM authentication of users for Linux (including the userid, of course)???

   posted at 09:39PM 04/06/2006
8. sukit said:

   win32codecs are not available for anything but 32bit x86 linux machines.
   
   Four words:
   I HATE THIS COMPANY

   posted at 12:39AM 04/07/2006
9. Auntie Whiner said:

   Could you find a way to tag the standard B******T comments so that people can scan meaningful information without having to parse through all the whining?  A simple "View All Comments" option would suffice, with a default view that leaves them out ...
   
   "If you can't find something nice to say about somebody, don't say anything."

   posted at 11:10AM 04/07/2006
10. Chris Travers said:

    I was unable to watch the broadcast because the WMA codecs, but the audio still works without pirating Microsoft's DLL's.
    
    First, AD is not hard to extend to provide NIS-like services for UNIX/Linux systems.  You already have Kerberos for the authentication.  In essence with some slight extensions, AD has everything you need for interop.  In these cases, it is just a matter of configuring PAM, nsswitch, and extending AD to meet the appropriate RFC's.
    
    It seems to me that most of the issues in this area have occurred due to bad network engineering on the part of the companies.  Evidently those with multiple logins have never actually read about Project Athena.  Yet, it seems to me that Project Athena was at least indirectly the inspiration for AD (at least via NDS).
    
    The problems that this guy talks about regarding UNIX/Linux environments are overblown in that these are a matter of implementation issues rather than inherent issues in the platform.
    
    I generally describe Athena as the concept of building a network like a SAN.  In essence, one can build a network such that new resources can be added and appear as if they are local, interacting seamlessly.  You can do this in UNIX with Kerberos, LDAP, X11, OpenAFS, etc.  You cannot readily do it with Windows.  Yet so many of these UNIX networks were implimented without looking carefully at how to do this.

    posted at 12:37PM 04/07/2006

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