I saw the Stephen Fry congratulations video on gnu’s website today, I think it’s fantastic that a well known and respected comedian joins our cause in promoting GNU software, linux, free software and even makes a cake (Did he make the cake himself???? win +1 if he did).
I also thought it was funny that on the desk next to him, he has an Apple Air opened and ready to use, probably for his iPhone, amirite?
In addition, even more funny was the use of a java video player on the page, considering GNU’s until recently stance on Java, which you can read here. I guess we’re all friends now that we have IcedTea, so it can be forgiven, but the Apple Air?? Who’s going to try to solve that puzzle with me 
Stephen Fry isnt an idiot, so why put an congratulations message to GNU, with an air sitting right next to him? Surely he realised? As well as this, the video was crap, the playback choppy, the sound was lagged, the player was unresponsive and basically, this is an advertisement of what free software can delivery, what a joke! Who is going to believe free software can deliver high quality software when they can’t even beat Youtube’s basic player. At least it works, is fast, no sound lag, good quality.</rant>
Anyway, you can watch the congratulations video here
And you can read his blog article on the same subject here
You can even laugh at the fact that there are like 30+ comments and NOBODY seems to point out that there is a Apple notebook sitting next to him, of course, apple runs gnu software too, how many of you want to put a bet that there is currently 0 applications on that notebook which is from the gnu set, no fink, no nothing, I’d be surprised if he had X11 installed (pretty much required for most graphical gnu applications).
Let the lulz begin (or end, it has been about 2 weeks since I bothered to put back my blog and write this, since the video was shown).
#1 by Matt Lee on September 15, 2008 - 11:19 pm
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Chris,
I was the writer and producer of the film. Let me clear up a few things.
The laptop in question was running gNewSense.
Certainly the Java player was suboptimal, but for users who are using Windows or a Mac, it is the easiest way to be able to play an Ogg Theora video without the need to install extra software.
Kind regards,
matt
#2 by chris on September 16, 2008 - 1:00 am
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Hi matt,
thanks for commenting, it’s not often the source of the content of a blog entry replies directly, most of the time, it’s 100,000 raving digg users.
about the laptop, I’m sure that you’re an honest guy and wouldnt lie, so I’m going to say “ok cool” buuuuuuut, perception is everything here, nobody in their right mind is going to think that by default, everyone is thinking, stephen fry is sitting next to an apple air, running no free software at all. So perception here, has just been destroyed and replaced with cynicism.
As for the video, it wasnt just sub-optimal, it was hardly watchable, I tried 5 times, how many people tried once before quitting, perception is everything and if you’re message doesnt transmit because you’re setup is crap, nobody will listen to you tell them how they can free themselves, everyone will take from that that you don’t actually have the ability to run a video in a website, nevermind save them from the evils of proprietary software. Why should they listen to someone like that?
APART from that, congratulations and I’m gonna stop blabbering, I’m sure you understand my points, they are very understandable. I hope you had a great party to celebratE!
Chris
#3 by Matt Lee on September 16, 2008 - 2:32 am
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No, you’re right. I think next we’ll try and get him to sit with my Thinkpad… should raise a few eyebrows.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/aug/10/internationalnews?picture=330367477
We got a lot of people view the video, over half a million downloads in fact, so I’m sorry it wasn’t so good for you. The option to download was always there. Video is hard to get right online, and YouTube didn’t happen over night, and I hope in time we’ll see a great deal of improvement here. Remember that the majority of video you see online is from one or two sources, who just happen to have got most things working nicely by relying on a proprietary virtual machine, controlled by one company (Adobe) that runs in a browser.
HTML5’s tag will help, as will Theora itself, plus the rise of Gnash. Things will get better for free software users, but as you will also note, gNewSense is recommended by Stephen in the video.
gNewSense is not going to work for everyone right now. Most wireless cards and 3d graphics don’t work, other things like Flash aren’t installable through the repositories. These are things we cannot easily do with free software right now. Distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora have them because of a reliance on proprietary software, which misses the point of this video somewhat.
Happy hacking,
matt