I got pretty excited when I started seeing news about Totem on Planet GNOME. The Linux desktop lacked (lacks?) a decent media player that normal people can use, so a simple application that works with GNOME seemed like a pretty nice development.
As of GNOME 2.10, Totem became the "offical media player of the GNOME desktop environment". When an application is included in the GNOME desktop, that often means that various settings default to using that application. For example, Totem appears to be the default handler for mms URIs.
This would be great, except for the fact that Totem exits without so much as an error window when fed an mms URI. (Actually, it segfaults, but apparently the bug-buddy hooks are missing…)
Well, no big deal. I'll change the handler for mms URIs.
Start looking in Desktop → Preferences. Hmm, maybe Preferred Applications? All I see there is Web Browser, Mail Reader, and Terminal.
Maybe it's Multimedia Systems Selector? Hmm, nothing about URI handlers there. I guess there's no "user-friendly" UI for this…
Sigh. Time to open up gconf-editor for the millionth time. At least there's a find command… (For future reference, the path is /desktop/gnome/url-handlers. A bunch of them default to using Totem.)
So, I have to ask: Why is Totem the default handler for mms URIs if it can't fucking handle them? MPlayer, while not all GNOME-friendly, handles them fine. I really need to drop GNOME…
DON'T PUT SPOILERS IN YOUR DVD INTRODUCTION. (Warning: Spoilers below if you haven't watched Season 3 of 24.)
I've been watching the previous seasons of 24 recently. For the most part, the DVDs are well produced - nothing special, but not at all bad.
But then I got the first disc of the third season in the mail. One of the first images is of Nina Myers, who wasn't out of the running simply because she wasn't dead, but still. Her involvement in the plot wasn't revealed until the ninth episode of the season.
We also get to see Jack Bauer shooting up during the DVD introdution, and while his addiction is revealed early in the season, it's still a spoiler.
DVD producers need to realize their audience includes people who haven't watched the show previously, for one reason or another. Maybe it's only a small part of the audience, but still - choose images which don't spoil the plot for us.
Sincerely,
dwc
P.S. No one really cares about your DVD introductions in the first place. If you must make a lame introduction, don't make it longer than 5 seconds. Seriously.