Users of my Python-iView application may have noticed that when attempting to watch videos, they cut out after 8MB.
This is because the ABC have turned on “SWF verification”, which translates to “our incompetent head of IT who is a fan of Hello Kitty and also eats puppies decided we would enable this, similar to how passports and airport security actually keep out terrorists and criminals, and also explains why there is no crime in the world any more”.
Which also translates to “security by obscurity”, “papers please”, “fascism”, “коммунизм”, and “Miguel de Icaza”.
Because anybody watching videos from iView in anything other than the Flash-based web interface, e.g. on an underpowered Eee PC, an Xbox, or somebody offline, clearly shouldn’t be doing so. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out — even a manager could work that out.
(And if you’re the type of manager that actually likes to fix problems and get things done — I know, bowls me over too — then disable SWF verification. It’s, like, a checkbox fix.)
I was REALLY dissappointed to see this. As downloading the FLV’s and recoding them to mp4 is the only was I can actually watch them on the PS3. Seeing as ABC still can’t get the streams to play smoother than 1fps on the ps3 them selves.
Grrr. And I was thinking of adding regex parsing for show title matching and auto downloading to the script. Grrr.
I can’t comment specifically on your adventures with iView, but I had to say paragraphs two and three combined form perhaps the single greatest piece of literary artistry and brilliance of any blog post I’ve ever read!
I would have added Mono, Moonlight and Tomboy to your list, but I suppose de Icaza encapsulates all of these just fine.
Hehe. I was laughing my head off as I wrote that, although I do feel sorry for Miguel, with all the jokes at his expense.
He really has done great work in the open source community — starting GNOME and Ximian being the most awesome. I ♥ Evolution.
Evolution is pretty sweet, I’d probably move over to it if I didn’t have so many plugins and data invested in Mozilla Mail and later Thunderbird over the years. Thunderbird 3.0 with Sunbird still doesn’t match Evolution’s interface.
[...] SWF verification keys updated. [...]