Speaking of transparency: Being the nerd that I am, I was fascinated by Netflix’s recent blog post about the nitty-gritty of the encoding process for their “Watch Instantly” streaming service. Of particular interest to me as a Mac user was the amount of effort they’ve had to put into switching to Silverlight—basically re-encoding every item in their library, much like YouTube did when they began supporting RTSP streaming on mobile devices. Of course, this transition also opens the door for the new Xbox streaming service, so maybe I shouldn’t feel so special, but it’s still quite a feat.

I’ve been trying out Netflix’s new Silverlight player at home and I’ve been very pleased with the results so far. The automatic bandwidth adjustment isn’t entirely seamless on my slow home connection, but I have to say that the frustration of the occasional “buffering” progress bar is far outweighed by the joy of being able to watch old History Channel documentaries and episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (ad-free!) on my Mac Mini at home. That plus terrestrial high-def TV makes it that much easier not to be a cable subscriber. Yay!

(By the way, in case you haven’t heard: If you’re a Netflix member who’s interested in joining the Silverlight beta program, you can opt in here.)

Here’s something interesting: RED, the camera company started by Oakley founder Jim Jannard, has launched the Scarlet and Epic, a modular, Chinese-Menu style approach to building one’s own custom imaging solution.

Basically, you choose the “brain” (an imaging core ranging from 4.9MP to 261MP!), and then outfit it to your personal needs, whether they be photo or video. Best of all, it offers both Nikon AND Canon mounts in addition to their proprietary mount.

If you have the scratch and can look past the Halo-esque aesthetics, this may represent the first evolutionary leap in digital camera technology: a design that no longer conforms to the vestiges of a film system. It also embraces the fact that sensors will keep getting better, so why not just upgrade your brain once in a while?

(Full brochure)
via Photography Bay.

Creepy article from MSNBC about an Australian company that is marketing a software package to ISPs that has the ability to monitor every packet of data on the web, in an effort to find and block child pornography. I’m no fan of kiddie porn, of course, but I find the privacy aspects of a wiretap on my internet connection none-too-pleasant. Especially as someone who works in the tech industry, for tech companies that also are ISPs and whose competitors may also own ISPs. Seems like a bad idea.

The funny thing, though, is the blatant self-promotion of the software company that makes the product:

“I don’t think it takes many voices before the Internet industry separates out those who are prepared to build a business on the trafficking of child sexual exploitation, said Michael Speck, Brilliant Digital’s commercial manager in charge of law enforcement products.

Um, Mr. Spark, that pretty much sounds like your business.

Articles like this really piss me off because it gives the IT world a bad name and adds to the paranoia people feel about IT staff members. It really does more harm than good. It does however raise some pretty interesting points about data security in general.

Lets say, for example, that you’re a large business that relies on some mail server to keep your business functioning properly. Now said server uses a master “Administrator” account to grant privileges, and generally administer the server. Then after the administrator account is created it delegates roles to people based on their needs, so you have your database guy, and he gets access to your encrypted email store so that he can back it up, your user create guy that creates and manages users, etc. Then you LOCK the administrator account, you assign it a password that is insanely long and impossible to remember. Then you print that password out, fold the paper, and then laminate that folded piece of paper and stick it in a vault. Then you stick that smaller vault inside another vault that has two keys. You give the combination of the smaller inner vault to the CEO or President of the company. The keys to the outer vault go to two other major share holders or Executives, and thus the vault can not be opened with out the consensus of the board.

Then your administrator account is protected, and no one has full, unhindered access to the mail server. Simple right? and this isn’t even an original idea, I think heard it in a movie. but it makes total sense!

Its like when a few months ago, the network admin for the city of San Francisco held the entire network hostage because he was fired. No one should be allowed unlimited access, not even the executives or the owners, anyone can act maliciously on a network. Like the ol’ IT adage says: sometimes your greatest threat is within. deep right?

I was away for a week last week so I missed this, BUT IT IS FREAKING INSANE.

Diebold has admitted that it was faulty software that caused evoting machines to drop HUNDREDS of votes on their touch screen voting machines.

Uh. HELLO! is anyone else freaking out that this company has made and sold a metric shit-ton of these machines? and that a good part of the United States will be actually voting on them in November?

a wee bit of backstory: originally they suspected the vote counting servers as the drop point, pointing the blame squarely at McAfee and their virus protection suite. Now Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, says:

In-freaking-sane. Ok really, how hard is it to make some software that counts how many times someone presses a button. I wrote a javascript to do it in 10th grade, and that didn’t drop any counts. Problem really is that Premier/Diebold rely on proprietary technology, and they offer no transparency in their source code. If they released the source code, then the community as a whole could view and judge it, and find these “logic errors” before they are even an issue. More eyes = less mistakes. No one person ever writes perfect code (ok maybe Toby does, but that dude is a machine).

I realize there are tons of intricacies in these systems, but I can think of at least 5 ways to simplify the whole system and make it safer, more secure, and more transparent. And if you’d like those ideas feel free to hit up newbiz-inquiries@barbariangroup.com, heh.

Doing some writing for O’Reilly. My first post is on the rad SproutCore framework.

Now go submit some patches to their SCM to get TableView support finished!

I have seen this “Kindle” thing floating around on Amazon for quite a while now. Essentially, Kindle is Amazon’s improvement to e-books – a hand-held wireless device that allows you to purchase and download electronic books and novels. It sports an iPod-esque white color scheme, can hold up to 125,000 digitally formated books, and is being sold for $359. Pretty nifty. The Amazon folks are saying it will be big, but I’m just not sure.

Sure it has some obvious pros… You could save a lot of trees by purchasing electronic novels. A book will never be “out-of-stock” or have a waiting period since a digital medium can’t sell out. You can download books on the fly and wont have to schedule a trek to the library or bookstore into your busy day. And its definitely a huge improvement over e-books. At least now this hand-held device can travel with you (at a super light weight of roughly 10 ounces) and your e-books won’t have to live on a bulky laptop.

Regardless, I think there is something amazingly powerful about holding a book in your hands and actually turning the pages… being able to bookmark your place within a novel and see just how many pages you’ve read… having the option to lend a book to a friend, or sell it back to a used book store. None of these things are really possible with Kindle.

Above all, the intimacy of reading a paper book is one of the few things that removes us from the ever-present glare of an electronic screen (be it a computer, phone, iPod, or TV). I stare at my computer all day at work, and when I get on the T to head home, I pull out a book and read. There is something great about getting lost in the pages of a book, and I’m just not sure if that can be replaced by another screen. We rely so heavily on electronics in our day to day lives, its sometimes nice to unplug, and reading certainly does that for me.

Who knows… Maybe Kindle will catch on and become ridiculously popular. Maybe people will be all about the lack of pages and digital formatting. I’m just not ready for that yet and won’t be rushing out to purchase one anytime soon.

Here’s a handy article if you want to read more.

I am a person that tends to look at situations with a… how would you put it…. cautious eye? Anyway, Katie and I went out to get some beers and food at Legal Seafood near long warf yesterday, and when I presented my credit card to pay I was handed a wireless card swiper.