Addicted to Binary Blobs

 The Mono folks, lead by Miguel de Icaza, released a Moonlight 3.0 Preview that actually plays Microsoft Silverlight 3 videos on my 64-bit Ubuntu Linux box. I was able to go to the NBC Olympics website ("Powered by Microsoft Silverlight") and actually watch videos on Linux. Before this did not work at all, and yes, I had Moonlight installed. It just didn't work on these videos. With the 3.0 preview installed, it just worked. (Well, it just worked after I followed the prompting to accept a license agreement and download some codecs, but that's the norm for non-free software.) When I played a video, first I am warned that I am using an unsupported operating system, and then the video plays. It plays pretty good in the small window embedded in the web page, but it seems to have problems with full screen. (That could be a problem with my network connection.) Well done, folks! Kudos!

Of course, if I go to the site for Microsoft Security Essentials and try to play the installation video, all I get is audio. Not that I could (or would) install that software on Linux, but still, the Silverlight installation video still should play. It works on Windows.

Wow. I have just now lost all my open source credibility. Umm, play ogg?

I'm a sucker for sound and video. Seriously. I listen to more music, radio and TV on my computer than I do using any other device. I probably should not be wasting so much time, but I do need to get my fix. I watch my video and listen to my music on Linux, not on Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. It all works pretty well most of the time, but I can't do it without using non-free "binary blobs" of software. This is the norm for Windows and Mac OS X, but Linux is generally free and open source. Generally. The dirty secret of Linux is that almost everyone who plays sound and video usually does so with proprietary, non-open source software, such as MP3 or Flash. This stuff may be free as in free beer, but it is not free as in free speech. There are open source alternatives, but it can be hard to find radio stations and video sources using them. It's not pretty, but that's the way it is. You can read all about Free and Open Source Software issues at the Free Software Foundation. Play ogg, if you can. If you can't, you must make you own choices. I put the binary blobs in. You might choose to leave them out.

According to my beautiful and talented sweetie, Miss Lizzy, the most important thing my computer does it print out the day's crossword puzzle for her.  She's not very upfront about this, but that's that the way it is. She will hover around me in the morning, waiting for me to print out the crossword puzzle. (This is a good thing, because I like sugar.) This crossword puzzle in question is an Adobe Flashplayer application that runs in a web browser, usually Firefox for me. All was well until one fine day, the puzzle would not print out. Aw, snap! Dang old software upgrades.

The printer is still working fine, and I can print from any application I want, except from the Flashplayer crossword puzzle. Even the frickin' built in scanner still works. No fun here, and sugar may soon be rationed. There is a work around, but it's fugly. The work around is to tell grub to boot Windows Vista, where Firefox and Flash can print out a crossword puzzle for Lizzy. Yuck! Windows one huge non-free binary blob, and now I need it. This is killing me. Help me! Help me! Next, I'll be on TV with Bill Gates, saying "I'm a pc!" and "Bing!".

The things I do for love.