xine on FC3

[Paul King]

On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 22:53 -0400, Jamon Camisso wrote:
> Paul King wrote:
> > I finally have xine working on Fedora Core 3, but it required a bunch of
> > RPM files which I found in various nameless, faceless RPM distro sites.
> 
> Nameless/faceless meaning obscure, or meaning obfuscatory so as to not 
> name the site? freshrpms has FC3 xine rpms, and their repositories (for 
> various distros/FC versions) integrate with most of the common package 
> management systems on the different versions of FC.
> 

there were several different sites which I visited for xine, xine-lib,
and several supporting packages. I didn't think it was all that relevant
to mention them, or even try to remember what they were. I just entered
a package name on Google, and went to the first relevant site that had a
viable package for FC3. I only visited freshrpms once. There was also
rpmfind, I think, as well as several sites that looked like rpmfind
(they may have well been rpmfind, although I can't recall).

> > I have had some problems with sound (it would cut out when I stop and
> > restart a video).
> > 
> > Right now I am watching an AVI-format video called "Computer Networks:
> > The Heralds of Resource Sharing", copied from a 1970s film made by
> > ARPANet. Ironically, while this AVI is in a now-obsolete Windows format,
> > it *only* seems to be playable in Linux. This is not true for AVI files
> > in general. Normally, Windows Media Player will complain about some
> > resource not being found, but play it anyway. But Media Player doesn't
> > even know what this file is.
> 
> That depends on the actual codecs in use within the file. If I 
> understand it correctly, avi is more of a container for audio and video 
> data than it is an indicator of the compatibility of said data -- the 
> internally interleaved (audio video interleave) streams can be encoded 
> in whatever codec you like.
> 

I think it was later hacked into being a container for other formats
once Windows refused to support it in favour of WMV or whatever the
multimedia flavour-of-the-month is.

> > Right now, a person is drawing a network diagram, and explaining why
> > IMPs were favoured over direct 50-kilobit connections. Later they will
> > discuss TIPs and timesharing. The film is a true museum piece, but
> > everything they say about the impact on society and the quantum leaps in
> > technological advances appear to hold true today.
> 
> Where does one find this video (if it is freely available that is)? I 

The newsgroups: alt.binaries.documentaries (if the binary hasn't
expired). It is a shade over 122 megabytes to download. Then you need to
unrar the parts.

They explain what IMPs and TIPs are in the video. IMPs appear to be a
predecessor to modems. TIPs are the same, except that they are used by
timeshared mainframes, allowing several users to access the same
connection to the outer world. The alternative was to have a direct
connection between computers that was a mere 50 kilobits per second.
IMPs were an improvement in that it could chop up information into these
newfangled things (for the '70s) called "packets", then reassemble these
packets at the other end on a receiving IMP before sending it to the
person's computer. On a timeshared system, that means that person A, B,
and C should, in theory, be able to send packets simultaneously to the
same or different destinations, and not worry that the packets will get
all jumbled up. Nobody ever says the word "modem". Maybe the word was
not known then, but I think that was the technology being discussed.

> have no idea what the preceding paragraph means (in technical terms), 
> but I find historical accounts of technology (and things and events in 
> general) are always always always interesting and can usually shed no 
> small amount of insight into current trends and technology.
> 
> Jamon
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