err, I meant 'nothing but netflix'...

I boycotted cable after my apartment burned down last year. After about 6 months of nothing but youtube and crappy low quality internet streams, I finally caved and got DirecTV. I still hate paying for the service, but it is really nice having the option of not having to 'digg through the crates' in order to find something to watch, when I feel like being spoonfed by the programming networks.

The fact that I had bought a 1080p LED samsung TV, and was subjecting it to nothing but netflix via netbook or xbox, sure was visible once I plugged-in my DTV box and got actual HD video. HUGE difference, I don't care what any stream-only advocate says. The bandwidth and programming simply isn't there just yet.

This is the decade of death for the big broadcast networks and providers though, I can safely say (as I said in 1998 about the record industry).

My point is that media distribution models can co-exist and offer a much better "I'm in control" experience for the user, rather than being subjected to one or the other, or being constantly spoonfed, if you can afford it.

"In Soviet Korea..." anyone?

Did anyone notice that there was not one reference point to any of the claims or stories mentioned in the article? or were you too busy reacting in a rage of fury by posting some 'Orwellian police state' comparison? 1000+ comments so far? I guess the social engineering aspect of the article worked, and even duped the slashdot crowd. Not surprising, these days, especially coming from a gawker site. What a loathsome bunch of mudslingers.

I had been one of those mislead skeptics and paranoid anti-radiation-braintumor cellphone conspiracy theorists until I actually worked around some radiology detection systems and began randomly testing things, like cell phones.

I never got to test an iphone, which is what I have now, but my old Samsung A90 from sprint, never set off any of the detection systems, unless I had just walked-in from the outside during day time, which was due to residual radiation from just walking outside. So I quickly realized that just walking around outside in the sun, exposed me to far more radiation than my cellphone alone ever would.

It was most interesting, though, when my old CTO went in for a CT scan and was tripping-off the radiation detectors for 3 days straight thereafter.

hmmm... cause or effect?

I seem to have bad luck with the one I named Alderaan, though. It seems to either disappear or blow up randomly when I plug my laptop (deathstar) on to the network. I don't get it either.

There are many reasons to chose to create your own framework, just as there are many reasons why you may choose not to.

Personally, I avoid mainstream OSS frameworks because of the security implications involved. Not that writing your own framework will reduce security implications (technically), but if you look at wordpress or joomla, both of which had a number of security exploits that targeted and penetrated millions of web sites that were using them, begs the question: would you want to be another one of those 'stunned' victims?

There are 'robots' crawling the web specifically programmed to root-out targeted exploits within specific OSS web apps, such as wordpress and joomla. The chances of someone writing a bot to exploit your (1 and only) framework, that nobody else uses, is a LOT less likely, albeit still possible.

There are also code-control issues to consider. As someone who has written PHP for years, and had to work with other people's code as well, I find it far less aggravating to work with my own code base, especially considering it takes about as long to adapt to someone else's code, as it does to simply write your own.

Originality is another big issue as well. If I have to look at one more mucked-up wordpress, drupal, or joomla site again, I think I'll stop browsing the internet entirely. Blogs have ruined the Web Application Ecosystem, imho. /digress