How Depressing Must Your Job Be If Its Focus Is On Breaking What The Technology Allows
from the soul-sucking-work dept
Rob Pegoraro has a column up about the latest in the very long line of back and forth attempts of companies making browsers for television sets to get around silly blocks from Hulu. Despite the fact that these systems are really just browsers legitimately connecting to a webpage, Hulu's corporate parents freaked out and ordered them blocked for no good reason. Of course, the workaround is easy: just spoof the type of browser, so that Hulu doesn't know that it's a browser on a TV. However, Hulu keeps trying to block these, which leads Pegoraro to ask a good question at the end:But when does Hulu get tired of playing this silly game? How do Hulu's own developers feel about working to ensure that their site stays broken for the "wrong" users? Do they not have one of the most degrading coding jobs in America? And to what end--so short-sighted suits can find new ways to annoy their customers?While it may seem like a random question, it could actually be a big deal. When Hulu first came out, one of the points that people made was that it really was put together by folks who understood the power of the internet. That is, they were "internet people" rather than "Hollywood people," which is what allowed the service to work well for many (definitely better than most expected). But, with the corporate bosses continually trying to limit what the site can do, you'd have to imagine that the developers working at the company must be getting annoyed. What kind of developer wants to focus on limiting what users can do with technology, rather than allowing something great? At some point, Hulu is destined to lose its best developers who just get sick of spending all their time breaking their product, rather than building something cool, useful and innovative.
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Filed Under: breaking, browsers, drm, kylo, online, tv
Companies: hulu, kylo
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Thus, with piracy you still have a better product than through Hulu.
When are the suits going to realize that they have to provide a better product in order to compete, not a worse product?
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wont make any differance
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Re: wont make any differance
Perhaps they are going to be coming out with their own streaming media box, or maybe they are doing this because of TV anywhere which is going to be a giant fail. Crap like this is one of the reasons I watch so little TV.
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But content providers don't get it. They don't realize that every day it gets cheaper to make video. Eventually, people like me (who have fun ideas) will start to make content. I'm not talking about a 72 second clip on youtube. I'm talking about quality stuff.
It isn't the pirates they need to fear. It's when the pirates get move from pirating to production. If you think you can't compete with free then, just wait.
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1. You can watch this ANYWHERE you want. On the subway, on the bus, outside at a lunch break. You don't need internet access! You simply turn on your laptop and go "Oh this is cool." Instead, you have to plan around needing to make sure you have internet access, making sure that you're using some awful flash browser and draining your laptop battery wasting cycles with that abomination.
2. Commercials. Hulu's got em. Downloaded AVIs don't. 'nuff said.
You lose.
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How often does it occur that someone sends you a random TV show to just pick up in the middle of a series? Any show I can think of relies on having prior knowledge of the series up to that point. And Hulu's show base is not so extensive that it has every season of various TV shows starting from the beginning. Unless it's changed since I used it a month or two ago, I found that to be a rarity.
Also, "planning" to put it on a laptop? Do you have half a brain or are you just intentionally stupid? I'll let you figure out your big issue there, Mr. "omg i can huluz on my laptop but i can't somehow download a file on my laptop".
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No one has ever sent me a tv show to pick up on. I don't carry a laptop very often. All my cpus are turned off at night. I don't want to hunt around on torrent sites.
Hulu is convenient. The commercials are short and I don't have to make any effort whatsoever.
But I can understand that you like avis. That's great. In fact, I used to use them, but streaming is the least hassle for me.
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That's called planning ahead.
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Well certainly in this one.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plan
It's not that hard to visit a website and click "download" while you're doing other things.
Who ever said it was hard?
It requires no more planning than "turn off tv and go to sleep", or "turn off lights and go to sleep", etc.
You really don't know what planning is, do you? Turning off the TV and going to sleep doesn't require planning, because it's something you can decide to do and do immediately. Downloading and watching a show requires planning, because you can't do it immediately. You have to decide what show you want, start the download (at this point you are planning to watch it later), and at some later time watch it.
It's like the difference between Netflix (bittorrent) and a bricks and mortar video store (Hulu). Netflix requires planning: I have to decide ahead of time what movies I want to watch. With a video store, I can go there with no idea, pick something out, and watch it immediately.
Perhaps you're confusing "planning" with "complexity". Plans can be very simple.
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OP (and future responders) did by suggesting that downloading takes an abundance of work while hulu is omgawesome.
You really don't know what planning is, do you? Turning off the TV and going to sleep doesn't require planning, because it's something you can decide to do and do immediately. Downloading and watching a show requires planning, because you can't do it immediately. You have to decide what show you want, start the download (at this point you are planning to watch it later), and at some later time watch it.
Your point of deciding what show you want is quite inane. It's not as if you go onto Hulu and it goes "OOH" and streams random nonsense. You still have to click onto or search for whatever show you want, regardless of medium. Also, given that Hulu doesn't get the shows until the following morning, you can't get your show immediately with Hulu either. A great example is that many people work late evenings. If I miss an hour of Law & Order, but I'm home at 8pm, there are already numerous downloads available ripped from TV. I can download it, eat dinner [or as another poster mentioned, turn around for two minutes] and find that my TV show is done. I'm also not confined to what shows, quality, and vendors Hulu thinks I should have. If you like using Flash, you can stop responding here because you're an idiot. Hulu is not going to stream a 1GB 720p or 1080i TV show to me.
Also, I love that you're bashing my position about 'planning' without addressing any of the issues I've mentioned. What about having to plan for needing a stable internet connection? You have to plan to be in a certain area with a certain kind of connection. If you're downloading something, you only need to worry about it for a brief window. After that, you're free to take your file anywhere and watch it, at your leisure, in any quality you so choose.
TLDR: both require planning; one's just a hell of a lot better for regular programs [e.g. weekly sitcoms] as opposed to random "omg i want to explore" situations.
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I just reread those posts and can't find where anyone said it's a lot of work. Perhaps you could point it out.
It's not as if you go onto Hulu and it goes "OOH" and streams random nonsense.
No, but you can click on something you find interesting on the Hulu home page.
Also, given that Hulu doesn't get the shows until the following morning, you can't get your show immediately with Hulu either.
"Immediately" meaning "when I want to watch a show", not "as soon as it airs".
Also, I love that you're bashing my position about 'planning' without addressing any of the issues I've mentioned. What about having to plan for needing a stable internet connection? You have to plan to be in a certain area with a certain kind of connection. If you're downloading something, you only need to worry about it for a brief window. After that, you're free to take your file anywhere and watch it, at your leisure, in any quality you so choose.
I didn't address it because I thought it was already covered. The OP said TV is not that important to him, so I would assume if he's somewhere without internet he would just do something else. If it's important to you to have TV where there's no internet connection, then Hulu or other streaming services are not a good choice for you, but that is so obvious I didn't feel a need to address it.
TLDR: both require planning; one's just a hell of a lot better for regular programs [e.g. weekly sitcoms] as opposed to random "omg i want to explore" situations.
In other words, there are legitimate reasons to choose either one over the other. The fact that OP's scenarios lead him to choose Hulu doesn't make him an idiot or wrong.
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There are times I sit down with a pizza planning to watch a TV show to rot my brain and clog my arteries with greese and LAMET AND SORROW I thought I had downloaded the right episode of Dr Who BUT I SOME HOW MISSED THE PREVIOUS EPISODE THAT SETS UP THIS ONE! If I was using a streaming service I'd shrug and click over to the previous one and get back to my tasty pizza. Now I have to eat the pizza and get no brain rotting in tandem. Because cold pizza just ain't cool...
LIFE IS HARD!
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thanks for playing the lose game.
how about a nice game of chess?
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Working on anti-features
I certainly would not want to do it. I don't think I'd accept such a job, unless maybe in totally desperate situation. Such job would make me hate myself.
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People who are lucky enough to have a decent-paying job in today's economy.
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But the thing I was intending to say - I wouldn't want such job even if it would mean more money. Money isn't everything. Job satisfaction is important for me.
But yeah, 1) everybody has a price, 2) when there's no choice and one is desperate enough...
It's just that I can't understand people who would work on such things having the choice.
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Breaking it for TV
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I watch
These kind of things got so annoying so I bought a dedicated netbook with hdmi out and wireless remote control. Haven't had a problem in months.
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Opening the door to GoogleTV
So far AppleTV has been a bit of a bust, but GoogleTV is going to be another attempt to open up the way people get their content. If they are successful the content providers may discover that their fear of cannibalizing has done nothing but open the door to allow GoogleTV to come in and scoop up a big chunk of the entertainment market. The market is out there and growing for Hulu-type services. The content providers have a choice -- they can try to capture that market now while they still have an advantage, or let someone else have it later. It will happen eventually, whether or not GoogleTV is successful.
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Developers, Developers, Developers...
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I have a silly idea .....
Why not just use a standard open source browser and modify it, or create a plug-in for it. This way if they break it they also break the browsers of people using "Authorized and allowable browsers".
Or am I missing something?
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I like good down load sites
The ads are repetitive and annoying.
I would much rather find my TV in the swarm.
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That said, I do have a computer hooked up to my high-def TV, and have used Hulu to watch some old episodes of various shows that I've missed, but I don't plan on canceling my DirecTV service with the HD DVR any time soon. The high def signal I get through that is a lot better than what Hulu gives you, in my opinion. Plus, with my DVR, I can retain old episodes indefinitely. With Hulu, old episodes may or may not be available. And don't forget that Hulu doesn't ever give you live broadcasts. I would have gone nuts had I not been able to watch the Lost finale as it aired.
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EXACTLY
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Except for the torrent files made from those high quality files. Which are identical, but free. Plus they won't have ads, or anti-piracy threats, that you can't advance through.
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You know what would be great?
That would show how anti consumer the content owners are and would potentially bring a lot of average joes into the fight for digital media.
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