MPLAYER problems

[W. Nick Dotson]

I'm trying to lighten Janina and Bill's loads by throwing this out to the list.

I got "mplayer" during the post installation coaching from Janina and Bill, so I could listen to richard Stallman's speeches.

I'm so new I'm thoroughly clueless on how to listen to streams, but from our University of West Florida radio station, a friend--who's actually pretty MAC-oriented, 
as are most round there,but they've been coerced into using PC's--Windows of course, but have heard of Linux.  I tried using Lynx to get to the web site, and 
click on the "on the air" button to no avail, couldn't even locate it.  So, wrote him and he gave me the following:
"mplayer mms://helix1.argo.uwf.edu/wm/wuwf1.wma" address, the command idea was mine, and Janina says it worked for her.  However, there are all these 
complaints which I can't memorize, and the computer is in a different room entirely--although I could transcribe it on the Braille Note and bring it here and 
transcribe it yet again...  (grin)  However, I think Janina had something when she reminded me that mplayer doesn't come with the codecs for playing Windows 
Media stuff.  So how and where do I get these "codecs"?  If Janina played the thing from my line, the're out there somewhere, but somehow I can't imagine 
"yum" taking care of it?  So, how does one find all the building blocks for Linux?

Nick