it works fine in Media Player for Mac yo

Not in my copy, it doesn't.

Works in mine just fine. Just launch WMP before running IE (not Safari or Mozilla) to wake up the damn plug-in.

Doesn't work in my config either, even if WMP is launched first. It complains that it doesn't know what the mime extension is. And this is in IE, M$'s own product.

I've seen this again and again. The webmaster could easily make this Mac compatible but they choose to deliberately make it MSIE only. The solution is to read the HTML code, search for .wmv and find the url, then load it into WMP directly. That URL is:

http://ms.radio-canada.ca/archives/English/hippie19670904et1.wmv

The video itself is extremely lame. It isn't lame and hilariously campy, just lame. Don't bother.

Speaking of video formats....it'd be awfully nice if Apple would get off their high horse and make Quicktime for linux reasonably up to date. I can play all sorts of Windows stuff!

kickstart: Try MPlayer or Xine, they both seem to work with 99% of Quicktime vids out there (in fact, the only ones I've found that don't seem to work are the Animatrix series... grrrr.) Not as good with RealPlayer support though, but the combination of Quicktime & Windows Media support and fullscreen mode beats the usual Windows players for me. ISTR MPlayer wanting all sorts of convoluted build options and three different binary codec packages, though, but on Gentoo it's all just an "emerge" away.

The video itself was probably more interesting for the curiosity factor of seeing a young Gibson than the actual content. Might be interesting to see if they have anything on the Gastown (Vancouver) Riots of 1967 & 1971.

At first I was just about turned off by that movie. I thought I was about to lose any respect for Gibson after that opening segment of BS, and as a result might never read another book of his. I've only read Neuromancer. But I tried to find some more info on his life as a hippie as I was listening to the middle part. I found this interview of Gibson which says that his Vietnam War draft "wasn't so much politically motivated, he says, as it was a result of his desire to continue sleeping with 'hippie chicks.'". Then Gibson reappears at the end of the video talking about "love" and sex as he walks off with a "chik", and I realized that he was just a geek who knew realized the best way to get some action. I can't hold THAT against him ;-)

-Brian

Can someone recommend a good .asx player?

Gibson's extensive comments on his CBC appearance in his blog:

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_05_01_archive.asp

Short form: He did it for the money, so he could get his own place.

Edited by author 05-02-2003 07:43 AM
1997, The Web Cafe, Vancouver:

I'm up on an aluminum ladder, shooting William Gibson
(sitting comfortably on a comfy couch on the second-level
atrium) with a then-expensive DV camera, the interview
footage being streamed live via the internet to the
MuchMusic studios in Toronto. Due to the buggy software
(VXtreme), the sound isn't getting to the big T.O., so
the producer phones long distance via his cell phone.

Not suprisingly, there's a serious sound sync problem, and
Gibson's voice can be heard when host Terry David Mulligan
is moving his mouth. (The hideous irony should be obvious
to those familiar with TDM.)


tom
-=W=-

I'm not a Microsoft fan, but the Windows Media 9 codecs knock spots off every other mainstream format out there. Incredible quality for the bandwidth.