On Mon, 4 Jun 2018, Bill Putney wrote:
Once you get deep down in bugville it takes a nerd to figure things out.
If it's a *nix nerd, could be anyone and since there are "man pages",
about anyone can figure out most things on their own. If it's Windoz
nerd, they have to have gone to the M$ certification training and have
taken generous doses of Redmond supplied Cool-Aid®. There is nowhere for
you to find out those "secrets" to help yourself.
That's a consequence of the difference between open-source and proprietary
software. Microsoft owns Windows; they are the only gatekeeper to
knowledge about it, so to learn anything about it, you have to deal with
them on their terms.
Most people get all frustrated by *nix because it gives you the tools to
try to help yourself. Fixing a difficult problem can be hard. If you
have a similar bug in Windows most people try never try to fix it
themselves, and so, are frustrated by the support system not the
operating system.
Our company, Sugar River Media, has five stations (and Sugar River
Foundation, a non-profit affiliate, has a sixth). Five of the stations run
Rivendell; the sixth runs a proprietary Windows-based system called Player
101. We keep Player 101 running solely because that is the preference of
that station's GM, and as long as it's successful, he gets to run whatever
he feels is best.
Four of the stations run music formats, and we're in the process of
getting them to stream on the Internet. SoundExchange -- that's the
organization that represents holders of copyrights on sound recordings --
requires us to submit monthly a list of all the musical recordings we
stream and the number of listeners who heard each. Ww are in the process
of adding International Standard Recording Codes (ISRC's) for all the
songs we play.
On the Rivendell systems, the database is open source; I werote a script
that simply goes through the databsee and plugs in the ISRC for each song.
On Player 101, however, it all has to be entered manually through their
user interface, which is slowing us down. Not until we get all those codes
entered can we begin streaming that station...and I have no idea how to
generate the monthly report; by contrast, on the Rivendell systems I can
just run a script, feed it the Icecast log for the month in question, and
it all comes out the way SoundExchange wants it.
If you just apply a Windows user perspective on *nix system use, all
will be well. Immediately upon encountering a problem, through up your
hands and find a nerd to fix it.
The problem with "finding a nerd" is that nerds aren't cheap, and if you
pay one to develop a custom piece of code for you, you are dependent on
him or her for the lifespan of that code. If you do it yourself using
open-source tools and document it, anyone who comes after can figure it
out themselves.
If you pay for support from Paravel, it is the least expensive thing
you'll pay for at a broadcast station. Why wouldn't you do that, even if
you are a nerd?
My understanding is that Paravel only offers support for installations
made via their Applicance CD; is that correct?
Paravel spends a lot of time and energy keeping Rivendell up to snuff
and adding features. Why wouldn't you want them to stay a healthy
business enterprise?
That point is very well made.
Attempts to make Rivendell "better" by porting it to Windows ignores a
lot about how Windows is supported.
From what I know of Rivendell, it is impossible to port it to Windows; the
best one could do would be to develop something that looks and feels like
Rivendell but is completely different under the hood. And why would one
want to do that? There are no advantages to using Windows, which is a
general purpose OS for home and office use that is essentially a
single-user, single-tasking OS with multitasking tacked on as an
afterthought.
I may have recounted for y'all my story about AudioVault and the Boston
Celtics at a station in New Hampshire; if so, feel free to skip this. The
station found that occasionally during a Celtics game AudioValut would
start a commercial break at the appropriate time but never return to the
game; the station would go silent until someone VNC'd in and restarted the
relevant AudioVault application. The maddening thing is that it would
happen occasionally, once a month or so, with no rhyme or reason. BE (the
AudioVault developer) was stumped; after digesting several games worth of
logs they threw up their hands.
It turned out that the station was recording news headlines during the
game and playing them back as the first element of the next break. The
problem was that AVAir, which is the part of AV that ran the local breaks,
would open the first file to be played in a break immediately after the
end of the last break. If the news headlines had already been recorded by
then, well and good; but if AVSat tried to record the headlines after the
file had been opened by AVAir, it would get "access denied" from Windows
and crash. The game would continue on the air, and the next break would
run when AVAir got the signal from the satellite, but at the end of the
break AVSat would not be there to put the game back on, so there would be
silence.
Now, that would never happen with Rivendell, since the underlying *nix OS,
having been designed from the get-go as a multiuser, multitasking OS, has
a more sophisticated file locaking system. Why would anyone want to
sacrifice that?
One of our Rivendell stations takes CBS News at the top of each our, but
not before waiting for the song currently playing to finish. Rivendell can
play that file while it is still recording; can any Windows-based
automation system do that?
Rob
--
Я там, где ребята толковые,
Я там, где плакаты "Вперёд",
Где песни рабочие новые
Страна трудовая поёт.
_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
