no audio/video on cnn site

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings;

I too, as I expect several million other linux users are also, am not getting 
any audio or video from the news story itself AFTER that ugly, PG98 rated HBO 
commercial promo plays since your last site redesign.

There is a reason for web coding standards, its so anyone with a browser can 
access those pages that comply to those standards.

Since we (linux/BSD/Solaris etc) now represent about 12 to 15% of the network 
users, with windows falling in popularity by our numbers as people switch to 
linux or one of the BSD's, or maybe even Solaris on our x86 boxes, your 
apparent thinking that if it works on windows it is fine is not going to do 
it in the future.  And the future is right now.

In a previous reply from you that I saw, you were told that the user was 
running linux, but you ignored that minor detail and rambled on about how he 
could fix it just as if all computers on the planet were running windows.  
They are not...

I had high hopes we would come up with a spoofing mechanism that would work, 
but sadly, as close as I have gotten is to tell your site I'm running 
netscape-4.8 on vista.  That gets me as far as opening the player window, 
then a long pause and a request that I download and install the "Turner Video 
Player" or something similar, and when clicking on that it turns out to be 
some windows .exe file that linux, with its protections against viri and 
rootkits, cannot readily be forced to execute, and if we did, it would find 
itself, and any virus load it might be carrying, in a very strange 
environment indeed.  A secure by design environment.

Please submit your site to the web page validation service available at
<http://www.w3.org/> and fix anything it fusses about.  Then you can rest 
assured that your site should play properly on any browser that is coded to 
be w3c compliant, possibly even IE7 on windows vista, and which is not 
encumbered by your use of a proprietary, patented file format.  There are 
formats other than flash and .wmv, some of which are considerably higher 
quality AND free of any patented (and therefore not legally usable in the US 
by linux/BSD users).  Google for ogg and theora as one example.

I just ran <http://www.cnn.com> through the validation service, and it reports 
153 errors.

The insulting part of it is that the HBO promo's for some murder, or way 
underage sexual activity does play, just fine.  I know, I've watched it 
probably 150 times now while testing various options.

The news itself is bad enough, but to promo that sort of stuff where some 
underage children might be trolling for a civics class report borders on a 
callous, almost criminal attitude that does not leave a major networks news 
dept's impression on the people in very good shape.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)