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Why Netflix Is One of the Most Important Cloud Computing Companies
Brandon Butler writes "Netflix, yes the video rental company Netflix, is changing the cloud game. During the past two years the company has pulled back the curtains through its Netflix OSS program to provide a behind-the-scenes look into how it runs one of the largest deployments of Amazon Web Services cloud-based resources. In doing so, the company is creating tools that can be used by both entire business-size scale cloud deployments and even smaller test environments. The Simian Army, for example randomly kills off VMs or entire availability zones in Amazon's cloud to test fault tolerance, Asgard is a cloud resource dashboard and Lipstick on (Apache) Pig, is a data visualization tool for the Hadoop program; there are dozens of others that help deploy, manage and monitor the tens of thousands of VM instances the company company can be running at any single time. Netflix is also creating a cadre of developers who are experts in managing cloud deployments, and already its former employees are popping up at other companies to bring their expertise on how to run a large-scale cloud resources. Meanwhile, Netflix does this all in AWS's cloud, which raises some questions of how good of a job it's actually doing when it can be massively impacted by cloud outages, such as the one on Christmas Eve last year that brought down Netflix's services but, interestingly, not Amazon's own video streaming system, which is a competitor to the company."
Meanwhile, Netflix does this all in AWS's cloud, which raises some questions of how good of a job it's actually doing when it can be massively impacted by cloud outages, such as the one on Christmas Eve last year that brought down Netflix's services but, interestingly, not Amazon's own video streaming system, which is a competitor to the company.
How easily people forget that AWS is Amazon's excess server capacity. They are not a traditional hosting provider, and woe to those who forget that fact.
If ever there was a company big enough to save money by not going with a 3rd party for their hosting, it's Netflix. Why the hell are they on AWS? Youtube (Google) not only owns the servers, they bought a lot of the fiber lines too. What is Netflix thinking? Of course, given past brilliant decisions by Netflix, my guess would be "nothing logical" but this takes it to brave new levels of stupidity.
That is all !!
Just because something is hosted in the cloud does not mean that it is more or less subject to outages. Outages happen regardless of where it is hosted. In-house, cloud or on your own PC - that's life - deal with it!
While I watch Netflix, I sometimes think about all of the magic that must be going on behind the scenes to deal with varying delivery speed
In almost all cases, my video entertainment proceeds, uninterrupted
As a guy who has worked with video streaming at the lowest level, I have nothing but respect for their tech
It frustrates me that a company that relies so heavily on open source technologies on the server totally snubs users of those same open source technologies on the Desktop.
So you would have rather had no Netflix support in Android or ChromeOS? Because there would be no support at all without DRM. Such is the nature of the beast.
Absolutely.
In addition to that, it isn't even Netflix's fault. The publishers simply refuse to allow electronic distribution of their IP without DRM (even if this would have cost them additional piracy, as short sighted as they are.)
All so people can watch some of the worst entertainment in human history.
You know what? There's actually a bloody gigantic amount of excellent content on NetFlix. Admittedly their ultra-pathetic interface makes it damned near impossible to find, but it is there.
Now, there are reasons to dislike DRM, and in fact the stupid regional DRM licences are one of the reasons why people pay extra to access US NetFlix instead of their local one*, And surely there are still times each month when I'll grab something from Pirate Bay because NetFlix doesn't have it.
But, and this is the big fat critical but, at the end of the day NetFlix works, works well, and delivers a hell of a lot of good programming for very, very little money. And does so in way that the DRM is simply not noticeable.
It may be preferable for NetFlix to have no DRM, but as it stands now I can't think of any practical difference it would make to my experience as a user.
Until the anti-DRM crowd creates a fully Open Source media service, licences tens of thousands of TV shows and movies, and serves it up DRM free, NetFlix is the best that we've got.
*If you're stuck with NetFlix Canada, well accept that you've got one quarter of the choices, and half of those feature Paul Gross.
Three Squirrels
"Williams, COM-CINC-PAC, RAM-SET, M-O-S 92, H-TAC, OFSPEC, Pattywhack"... "Pattywhack?" " Give a dog a bone, sir."
Yes. When you sign up for Netflix, you agree to their terms of service, that you will not copy their shit.
Instead of just suing people who break their terms of service (which is completely reasonable. If you don't want to abide by the terms, don't use the service), they cram unworkable DRM into open standards. Now we wind up with code running on our own devices that 1) we don't know what it's doing and 2) breaking it open to see what it's doing is a crime.
The NSA spying/backdoor bullshit should make it abundantly clear that non-libre software is a threat to human rights, and should be rejected, whether it's for movie streaming, "secure boot," cloud storage, or anything else. Fuck netflix right in their stupid faces.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So, to hell with ethics, to hell with true ownership of your device, to hell with software freedom, lets just fucking throw all that useless shit out and pave the way for gems like The Avengers, Pacific Rim, and Transformers 35.
And in case you don't know what I am talking about, with the introduction of Android 4.3, software can now require hardware encryption based DRM. Slashdot sure made a stink about TPM and trusted computing back in the day, but now that glorious summer blockbusters are on the line, nobody seems to care.
Personally I don't use NetFlix - just not interested. But recently I was helping a friend manage her budget, and I noted that she had NetFlix automatically debiting her account. This is a very bad practice (good for corporations - bad for people), so I suggested we change it. Turns out you can't: If you want to sign up for NetFlix, you have to hand over a credit card and authorize them to automatically charge your account.
I talked via chat with a NetFlix rep to see if ther was an alternative. The suggestion: Sign up (and pay) for a year in advance. And when the year is up? - NetFlix will start automatically charging your credit card! In other words - give NetFlix access to your credit card or go away.
I will *never* authorize a company to automatically charge my credit card or debit my bank account, and I'll never do business with a company that offers no other option.
You're not obligated to use it. If you don't want to use DRM, then don't. But if other people want to, that's their choice. That's what freedom is about. Don't try to shove your opinions down other peoples' throats. Just make your own choice, and let other people make their own choice.
Instead of just suing people who break their terms of service (which is completely reasonable. If you don't want to abide by the terms, don't use the service), they cram unworkable DRM into open standards. Now we wind up with code running on our own devices that 1) we don't know what it's doing and 2) breaking it open to see what it's doing is a crime.
How can you say that with a straight face? If someone breaks their ToS, downloads thousands of videos and posts them online anonymously, how do you think Netflix will sue them?
If you don't want DRM on your phone, can't you just install a Cyanogenmod ROM that doesn't include the secret DRM bits?
>worst entertainment in human history
so edgy. you should post reviews of what you think quality entertainment is on your tumblr.
Implying cloud companies ARE important!
The Media Source API that Netflix is helping to push also provides a lot of really useful features for non-drm video in the web browser as well. Providing a simple way to download chunks of video and seamlessly insert them into a container through javascript will prove really useful for javascript web applications. Even some of the encrypted stuff will be great for things like sharing personal videos with only a few friends.
As a web developer interested in new ways to provide video, the Media Source stuff would immediately be really useful to me, and I'm sure many other people who won't even touch the DRM part. Don't let one company sour the whole proposal.
There's a big difference between "you can choose to use DRM or not" and "DRM should be incorporated directly into an open-ended standard". The former is a perfectly reasonable position. The latter is just stupid. HTTP supports plugins and add-ons, so why should DRM be part of the HTML standard? It (Netflix DRM) was working just fine without being part of the standard.
Since you and Netflix sold yours and everyone else rights and freedom away for a few convenient shitty movies, we will now have to deal with the introduction of hardware locked "trusted computing" phones, and software that requires it. I will certainly never purchase another Android device ever again.
This was bound to happen eventually. It's not just Netflix, it's also Amazon, which has consistently refused to bring AIS to anything but a handful of Google TV devices. And it will be coming to Apple devices sooner or later. Enjoy your Ubuntu phone, I guess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been a user of both services since they became available. Along with Amazon Unbox now becoming Amazon Instant Video and the even newer Amazon Instant Video with Prime, I humbly suggest that we consider that a large part of the Amazon Prime streaming library may actually be served to us by a white-label Netflix service.
Consider this: both Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video offer many of the same programming options with a few selections unavailable on one service or the other. Plus, there are many obscure series collections that appear on both services and at the same perceived video quality (at least, to my eyes).
The bulk of the live streaming library has to be shared, in my opinion, with Netflix. Business-wise, it makes sense. Logically, it makes even more sense.
Kriston
I still go to my local video store to rent movies or buy the DVDF/Bluray. I get commenataries, extra scenes and can watch it whenever I want. Eventually, Netflix deletes stuff from their libraries. What do we do with a movie we want to see again later? Some cloud services I do use, like Crunchyroll. But I much rather get the DVD set.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
*If you're stuck with NetFlix Canada, well accept that you've got one quarter of the choices, and half of those feature Paul Gross.
Heh, actually due to this I am amazed at the number of normally tech illiterate people that suddenly know all about VPNs or SSH tunnelling.
I like how you say the movies are shitty, as if you know what the poster (and other Netflix users) watch. Saying they're shitty is somehow supposed to enhance your position - to suggest that they're not worth it anyway to offset the DRM aspect.
Let's face it, hardware locked "trusted computing" phones and other hardware are the norm and getting worse no matter WHAT we do. We don't have the influence to tell every other person out there to not buy them - telling people to not enjoy life and modern technology over some ideological issues that really aren't that bad in the first place isn't going to work. Heck, as I get older I find myself less and less caring as well as more important things take priority in my life.
We can't stop locked hardware trends because the companies are too powerful. Fight battles that can be won.
I guess we should just give up on trying to end mass government spying on citizens too then. The average person doesn't care, they enjoy false sense of security it provides them. Telling people not to enjoy their false sense of security because it violates their rights is wrong and not going to work, and besides, it is not that bad anyway. And anyway, the government is just too big, it is not like we can do anything about it anyway. It is just an ideological issue.
Thinking about how the world is instead of how it should be, that is how a loser thinks.
What, pray-tell, do you honestly think YOU can do to make a difference? Spread the word? People don't CARE! The Internet seriously inflates how many people care about this issue, and in the end it doesn't matter anyway - the people at the top don't have any motivation to do anything differently because there's nothing to threaten them with. We have no power.
No, it's how someone who knows they have only one life to live acts. Not a loser - a smart person. Snowdon tried to do something about it, and now his life is completely and utterly fucked - asylum or not. He raised hell, and apart from some attention, nothing has happened of worth and history is a very strong indicator that nothing will happen in the future (as far as improving things is concerned)
I'm not saying it's right. I'm simply saying that it's EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to be a dreamer in a world like this. You can't fight them. So don't. Enjoy what we have and work around the problems as they come up. Might sound like giving up, but most people on other tech sites keep using Microsoft, Apple and Google technologies because honestly, you don't have anything to gain by not doing so.
So I can just hit the record button on my VCR and record it?
(Oh, right. It's digital, and HDCP protected. I suppose I could fire up the PS3 on its composite output, but meh: That's more downgrading than recording.)
So you mean I can do something like File -> Save As?
(Woops -- like that's going to be a thing that actually happens.)
The only reason that Netflix DRM is simply not noticeable is that we are already used to the concept that we needn't bother recording media for ourselves; we've already fallen down that particular slippery slope.
(Disclaimer: I like Netflix, and have been a subscriber for quite a few years.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Why shouldn't it be? Because you think it's yucky? Standards document what multiple vendors do, to help them do it the same way. That's all - they do not endorse, or make moral judgments.
Basically, successful standards usually take what vendors have working just fine without a standard and standardize it. Just making things up because they sound good and trying to impose them leads to fiascos like the previous HTML "standards", where half the endpoints didn't remotely comply.
Avoiding things that Xtifr finds yucky is unproven at best as a method for making a successful standard.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We can tho. By not buying their products. This guy is against what Android is doing yet still purchases their products, sending the message that he is ok with what they are doing. Then comes to slashdot to complain, as if that makes any difference.
Impressive technology, though I don't agree with some of the testing they do live in production. But important? Hardly. If Netflix went away right *now*, nothing inthe World would really change.
Compared to, say, Google's search going offline which would have a direct impact on both personal and business productivity globally.
How can you say that with a straight face? If someone breaks their ToS, downloads thousands of videos and posts them online anonymously, how do you think Netflix will sue them?
DRM doesn't prevent that scenario, never has never will. It only prevents regular folks from casual copying via Netflix. The serious people usually break new DRM technology in a matter of days, sometimes hours. At that point the casuals can get it all on the pirate bay in a superior format than the one Netflix provides because it isn't encumbered by DRM. Meanwhile you've got secret backdoored (secret=there's a backdoor) code running on your device to no benefit for anyone.
DRM and other copy protection should be ripped out and burned at the stake along with the fuckers that force it on us. I made a vhs video of family several years ago and when trying to convert it to digital format got into a battle with fucked-up protection shit blocking because I didn't have rights to the video.. WTH ?? This was my video shot on my machine! So much for purchased vido editing software! Found opensource to get the job done. Wish I could bill the bastards that own the lame protection for time wasted.
Care to enlighten us what software did this?
But, and this is the big fat critical but, at the end of the day NetFlix works, works well, and delivers a hell of a lot of good programming for very, very little money. And does so in way that the DRM is simply not noticeable.
Not noticeable? So I can run it on the machine connected to my projector, that runs FreeBSD and happily plays content grabbed from iPlayer or DVDs? Oh, no, sorry, not supported. Well, at least I can play it back on my WebOS tablet. Oh, sorry, not supported. Well, I can at least copy a few films to watch on a mobile device while I'm travelling? Oh, sorry, not supported either.
Meanwhile, I'm paying Lovefilm (Amazon) a monthly fee to rent DVDs because I can take these with me (or rip them for a mobile device, as long as I delete them before I send them back) when I travel, and I can watch them on every device I own.
Now, technically, it would be possible for me to rip every single DVD I rent, but I don't do this because there's no point. The entire point of paying the monthly subscription is for someone else to be responsible for maintaining the large library of content and being able to watch some of it when I want. I'd end up spending a lot on hard disks if I ripped them all and 99% of what I watch I have no desire to re-watch anyway.
A system that let me download films in a DRM-free format and had a monthly cost proportional to the number that I downloaded (e.g. 50 hours for the cost of my current 3-DVD-at-a-time package) would solve the problem for me and would mean that there is no danger (from their perspective) of my downloading everything I might ever want to watch - a somewhat silly fear that is predicated on the idea that there will never be new releases that I want to see - and cancelling the subscription.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Instead of just suing people who break their terms of service (which is completely reasonable. If you don't want to abide by the terms, don't use the service), they cram unworkable DRM into open standards. Now we wind up with code running on our own devices that 1) we don't know what it's doing and 2) breaking it open to see what it's doing is a crime.
How can you say that with a straight face? If someone breaks their ToS, downloads thousands of videos and posts them online anonymously, how do you think Netflix will sue them?
If you don't want DRM on your phone, can't you just install a Cyanogenmod ROM that doesn't include the secret DRM bits?
better yet install something with fake drm bits. the drm in netflix can't work perfectly and it doesn't and they know it.
anyways.. uh.. it's pretty much fake/busted drm to begin with. all it aims for is that you can't create a convinient tool to rip their movies to your hd without fuss, or at least I haven't bumped into one yet(and haven't searched). it would be pretty nice because their ui sucks balls. their library in Finland sucks balls too(like 1/20th of the US offering.. mythbusters? yeah, they have all of 3 first seasons).
because _all_ the stuff on netflix - even netflix exclusives - are being released online anonymously today already.
as to the subject matter.. it's pretty stupid if they don't have some people looking at the other cloud providers, since amazon is a direct competitor..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, double-reply fail. But here is my report. On Phenom II X6 1045T and 240GT with 8GB, Netflix desktop plays like shit. The audio is OK but the video is stuttery. It's butter-smooth in an XP VM. Netflix Desktop is shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't blame Netflix. The people that produce the movies and TV shows that people want to watch insist on DRM. So everyone that wants to deliver movies and TV shows digitally (Apple iTunes Store, Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, HBO, etc.), all have to have DRM on every platform that they deliver through, so you have pressure from the media owners and from all of the media vendors to implement DRM. Given that, Google had to decide whether to provide DRM in Android in order to be competitive with Apple. And clearly they decided to support DRM. So if you don't like DRM, blame the media companies that insist on it.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
There's no copy protection for VHS in the sense of DRM. The closest to protection on VHS tapes are the weird scrambling schemes that are applied to commercial VHS tapes to make them harder to copy, essentially by distorting the signal so that it just barely plays properly from the original tape, but which causes distortion, screwed up synch, blinking, etc., in copies. And that is a commercial process applied in manufacturing mass-produced tapes, certainly wasn't done to your personal tape.
If I had to guess, perhaps your camcorder was badly misaligned or damaged so that it wrote a bad signal, so your recorded tape couldn't be cleanly copied/digitized. A badly recorded tape would look to the tape duplicator like the intentionally corrupted "protected" tapes. There are plenty of (cheap) devices that can take the corrupted signal and clean it up for copying.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
DRM is going to be used whether it's in the standard or not. So you have to pick between making the standard open - so any software company can write tools that comply (proprietary tools by definition) or whether things continue as they are now, and Flash and Silverlight are de facto standards.
I don't think there's any technical or ethical reason to prefer one to the other.
"might sound like giving up" ? ? ?
that is the very definition of 'giving up'...
don't worry, there will be some 'losers' and snowdens who will fight the good fight for you, and you will enjoy the benefits, all the while you sit back and slurp your sugar water and munch your cheezy doodles...
dickless wormtongued pantywaist...
(glad our forefathers didn't think like you)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
Because without a standard we would end up with a plugin for each and every service and no one wants that. The point of a standard is to make sure that developers can make a browser/web page that will allow the content to be displayed everywhere. Why does an open standard have to mean open content. In the end the content is not yours so why wouldn't we give the content owners the choice to protect that content in a standardised way.
I hate DRM just as much as the next person, but I would rather have it in a standard so that can be implemented everywhere instead of another round of "oh you can't watch this because you aren't running Windows version X, and we don't feel like making a plugin for your OS".
If you want to get rid of DRM vote with your wallet. Don't make things more difficult by way of keeping this out of the standards, just for the sake of making people hate DRM to push your own agenda.
And to be clear: It's not actually DRM. It's just an API. And it's not that much different than Encrypted XML: It's just another standard to encrypt stuff, storing the key separately, to be recombined later. It doesn't proscribe access restrictions or much of anything else that people associate with DRM. I can imagine using it to efficiently encrypt a voice or video chat session between multiple people, for instance.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I refuse to do business with Netflix, because they send spam. Yes, I have personally received unsolicited commercial E-mail from Netflix, like the people writing at the two links I cite. Any company that uses and/or promotes spam should be boycotted and shunned.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Isn't Macrovision on on the PS3's composite output? I've wondered about that. The only reason I've thought of trying it is to watch something (e.g. documentaries, reality shows) faster than realtime on my recorder that can do it. (Whether you want to believe me or not, I won't record something like that for keeps even if I technically could. As a specific example, I'm downloading the "Under the Dome" episodes from my Tivo for keeps because that's allowed, but actually watching the ones on Amazon Prime since there's no bugs, don't have to manually skip the commercials, etc.)
You really don't think there'd be an "app" for that? Complete with its own enabling (or is that disabling?) DRM? Seriously?
There is Macrovision.
For example, trying to record HBO, even over a composite connection, on a commercial video recorder (e.g. Toshiba XS32) stops the recording because it's copy protected. (You can also have 'copy once' recordings.)
There is Macrovision.
For example, trying to record HBO, even over a composite connection, on a commercial video recorder (e.g. Toshiba XS32) stops the recording because it's copy protected. (You can also have 'copy once' recordings.)
Indeed, but OP said he had DRM trouble with a home made VHS movie when importing on PC with a commercial video editing software, but an open source program apparently worked... Sounds very strange and would be interesting with more specifics to this story.