Month: June 2005

Google has released Google Video Viewer, a browser plugin based on VLC. Here’s one of the features they’ve added:

+    // Google mods
+    const char* allowed_host = "video.google.com";
+    char * host_found = strstr(p_sys->url.psz_host, allowed_host);
+    if ((host_found == NULL) ||
+	((host_found + strlen(allowed_host)) !=
+	 (p_sys->url.psz_host + strlen(p_sys->url.psz_host)))) {
+      msg_Warn( p_access, "invalid host, only video.google.com is allowed" );
+      goto error;
+    }

This “feature” prevents you from playing videos that are not hosted on Google’s servers. Download and run this patch I wrote to remove this restriction. Running the patch requires a .NET runtime.

Update: Journalists never cease to amaze me with their ability to blow things out of proportion. For the record, I haven’t spoken to or exchanged emails with a single journalist about this, so when the Associated Press writes “said he needed only one day” that’s a complete and utter fabrication since I’ve said no such thing here on my blog.

Some of you have requested the source code for the patch: GVVPatch.cs

If you use VLC, you might have wondered what the hell is the cone for?

One day, people from the VIA association (VIA is a students’ network association with many clubs … amongst those is VideoLAN.) came back drunk with a cone. They then began a cone collection (which is now quite impressive I must say). Some time later, the VideoLAN project began and they decided to use the cone as their logo.