I couldn't agree more: most of the source stuff I watch is old BBC comedy... there ain't much hope in getting that stuff looking good blown up. What I HAVE always wanted is a bigger disk: rather than have "BlackAdder" on 4-5 DVD discs I've always wanted a "singe BlackAdder disc". So it's blueray disc but DVD encoding (I'm going to assume the DVD specs allow for unlimited space etc). Heck as the size increases I'd love a "Rowan Atkinson" disc. Yes I'd pay a high price, as the value would be there. So that's my desire: same encoding, less discs, more quantity per disc.
As far as quality goes I see more people rushing "downwards" towards lower online quality rips than "upwards".
It would have also helped if I didn't live in the southern hemisphere... seriously first Ninty and now Apple, its enough to give one tech rage. Apple are so well supported by loyal customers down under and just get nothing in return. So yeah, would have loved to buy one Steve, but for now I'm limited to screwing around with the SDK emulator. Did I mention that Aussies are mobile phone MAD ? On the upside at least we get to test v2 and v3 products:)
I would like to speculate that the Australian model won't scale to the kind of massive usage being pioneered by the US consumer of digital TV and film. Apple is yet to offer TV/movies in the Australian store (yes this sucks). Once the aussie user starts sucking down multi-Gig films I think the model will break down. So in a way it seems like Time Warner is proposing going backwards. I thought the future was supposed to be infinite free bandwidth ? How many Torrent users *really* download 9G movies ? Seems that most popular torrents are still highly compressed for ease of distribution.
The thing I don't get is when did we lose the fight on work environments ? I trudge through employer after employer who whilst willing to pay large salaries, is unable to provide basic, hygienic and ergonomically sound work areas. The cattle theory seems to be predominant, with tight assed accountants running creativity out the door. If you can pay 100K in Canberra Australia for a C++ programmer, you can at least provide the basics. To me there has been is a sea change in attitude towards programmers, of all ages. That book about creating a formal software profession, like law or medicine, was on the money: We've lost the battle to not become cattle. (ps: Java is the new VB around here).
Would a doctor be asked to setup a surgery in a cubicle farm ? Complex coding requires the same level of privacy, for most people. Since programmers aren't certified professionals, we don't get "no respect" and seem to be laughed at amongst normal social circles. Worst of all is the "widget" or "monkey" view that programmers are replaceable line items in some idealised software factory. One day (now?) there will be a reckoning as the best coders become divorced from any motivation to code commercially. sigh
Wouldn't it be best to just let the free market decide all this ? I suspect it's probably a temporary issue (as in the long run bandwidth will be infinite and free?). I guess the problem is that is one ISP filters then then logically they all do ? I wonder if it would be possible to fight back and make a router that detected "suspect filtering ISP" and routed to "free" routes, instead of borked routes. Then you could build a network of ISP's that offered "freedom" for a price ? I guess its impractical to find a "clean route" between endpoints. The other idea of encrypting traffic on that "pure ISP network" would be worth paying for ?
Seems like a business opportunity here to go "against the grain and goons"...
I would like to second the recommendation for Oubliette, I particularly like these features:
Inbuilt randomizer that is quite flexible to constrain as needed.
Nice and easy drag and drop between Oubliette app and target app... This means no keys actually being typed.
Not entirely certain but I *think* the cut and paste is secured somehow.
Anyways it works and has solved my password problem. The problem in a corporate environment is that this kind of approach is not deemed "seemless" enough. In my opinion the whole directory based SSO approach is overkill in the majority of cases. But if that floats your boat check out:
Protocom Secure Login (now owned by ActivCard)
Passlogix
many others but market is consolidating
There seems to be a move towards store and replay of these types of passwords on a smart card in the medium term.
sorry... should have been clearer (it's all in my head honest): I agree that the simple out of the box install works well and is bleedingly obvious. I was also setting up a full JES suite of identity based services. (you know: login via ldap, directory servers etc etc). I just found this doco to be very poor and riddled with small but annoying errors. Coming from an edirectory project it just seemed very very hard to get more advanced admin stuff going. A good example would be setting up mySQL4.1x properly on Solaris versus Windows... to me I got both working but it was much harder.
I just spent the last two weeks in hell at work trying to install, configure and use Solaris10/x86 (yes it is free to stuff around with at least: go here and download or order a media pack:
http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/g et.xml
I may be very rusty but I used to be a pretty hardcore SUN admin person and I was completely screwed: I found the documentation to be the worst kind of useless toilet paper.
Just one pieve: SUN seem very confused about what kind of admin gui they really want: Swing, command line or web portal: for historical reasons they have them all... good luck !
Going back to WinFriggen2K was a RELIEF... my idiot big button installers where all back. (for instance: compare the simplicity of installing a win32 service versus a service on SUN properly).
The Java Desktop is very pretty though.
there is no winner... its exactly like tic tac toe: all the IT companies seem to have patent farming in place of the old R&D expenditure. I've been told you grab as many idiotic patents you can: not to take them to court but to use them against other patents... its getting silly and should stop! This has to be coming to some kind of head.
I don't understand why you couldn't ship a specific web browser as part of your AJAX client release and do it in such a way it was self contained on the host. AJAX is a great approach to delivering a 'boring' client/server business app through a corporate environment... people still do that right ?
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As far as quality goes I see more people rushing "downwards" towards lower online quality rips than "upwards".
It would have also helped if I didn't live in the southern hemisphere... seriously first Ninty and now Apple, its enough to give one tech rage. Apple are so well supported by loyal customers down under and just get nothing in return. So yeah, would have loved to buy one Steve, but for now I'm limited to screwing around with the SDK emulator. Did I mention that Aussies are mobile phone MAD ? On the upside at least we get to test v2 and v3 products :)
I would like to speculate that the Australian model won't scale to the kind of massive usage being pioneered by the US consumer of digital TV and film. Apple is yet to offer TV/movies in the Australian store (yes this sucks). Once the aussie user starts sucking down multi-Gig films I think the model will break down. So in a way it seems like Time Warner is proposing going backwards. I thought the future was supposed to be infinite free bandwidth ? How many Torrent users *really* download 9G movies ? Seems that most popular torrents are still highly compressed for ease of distribution.
The thing I don't get is when did we lose the fight on work environments ? I trudge through employer after employer who whilst willing to pay large salaries, is unable to provide basic, hygienic and ergonomically sound work areas. The cattle theory seems to be predominant, with tight assed accountants running creativity out the door. If you can pay 100K in Canberra Australia for a C++ programmer, you can at least provide the basics. To me there has been is a sea change in attitude towards programmers, of all ages. That book about creating a formal software profession, like law or medicine, was on the money: We've lost the battle to not become cattle. (ps: Java is the new VB around here).
Would a doctor be asked to setup a surgery in a cubicle farm ? Complex coding requires the same level of privacy, for most people. Since programmers aren't certified professionals, we don't get "no respect" and seem to be laughed at amongst normal social circles. Worst of all is the "widget" or "monkey" view that programmers are replaceable line items in some idealised software factory. One day (now?) there will be a reckoning as the best coders become divorced from any motivation to code commercially. sigh
Wouldn't it be best to just let the free market decide all this ? I suspect it's probably a temporary issue (as in the long run bandwidth will be infinite and free?). I guess the problem is that is one ISP filters then then logically they all do ? I wonder if it would be possible to fight back and make a router that detected "suspect filtering ISP" and routed to "free" routes, instead of borked routes. Then you could build a network of ISP's that offered "freedom" for a price ? I guess its impractical to find a "clean route" between endpoints. The other idea of encrypting traffic on that "pure ISP network" would be worth paying for ?
Seems like a business opportunity here to go "against the grain and goons"...
- Inbuilt randomizer that is quite flexible to constrain as needed.
- Nice and easy drag and drop between Oubliette app and target app... This means no keys actually being typed.
- Not entirely certain but I *think* the cut and paste is secured somehow.
Anyways it works and has solved my password problem. The problem in a corporate environment is that this kind of approach is not deemed "seemless" enough. In my opinion the whole directory based SSO approach is overkill in the majority of cases. But if that floats your boat check out:- Protocom Secure Login (now owned by ActivCard)
- Passlogix
- many others but market is consolidating
There seems to be a move towards store and replay of these types of passwords on a smart card in the medium term.sorry... should have been clearer (it's all in my head honest): I agree that the simple out of the box install works well and is bleedingly obvious. I was also setting up a full JES suite of identity based services. (you know: login via ldap, directory servers etc etc). I just found this doco to be very poor and riddled with small but annoying errors. Coming from an edirectory project it just seemed very very hard to get more advanced admin stuff going. A good example would be setting up mySQL4.1x properly on Solaris versus Windows... to me I got both working but it was much harder.
I may be very rusty but I used to be a pretty hardcore SUN admin person and I was completely screwed: I found the documentation to be the worst kind of useless toilet paper.
Just one pieve: SUN seem very confused about what kind of admin gui they really want: Swing, command line or web portal: for historical reasons they have them all... good luck !
Going back to WinFriggen2K was a RELIEF... my idiot big button installers where all back. (for instance: compare the simplicity of installing a win32 service versus a service on SUN properly). The Java Desktop is very pretty though.
there is no winner... its exactly like tic tac toe: all the IT companies seem to have patent farming in place of the old R&D expenditure. I've been told you grab as many idiotic patents you can: not to take them to court but to use them against other patents... its getting silly and should stop! This has to be coming to some kind of head.
I don't understand why you couldn't ship a specific web browser as part of your AJAX client release and do it in such a way it was self contained on the host. AJAX is a great approach to delivering a 'boring' client/server business app through a corporate environment... people still do that right ?