vincentclark dot com

Yes, I am blogging it right now and am not even going to try to sound professional, not because professionalism is dead simply I am tired.

I need to start off with a stern warning to EVERYONE that this is the first, last, and ONLY place I better see the Hulu gene@#$. Anywhere. If we all agree never to use those three words in that combination and file it away with (CENSORED) and other words we thought would be best to never be formed and soon to be forgotten. Still where am I going with this? Simple. My credibility. This is what I think of the Internet and the people that comment on it. I may not always be right but I am rarely ever wrong. I have a thing for contrast as well as well -embed- joke, sometimes so obscure I don’t remember it the next day.

I fit into a group that is networked differently than most. This causes me to take a somewhat unique view of the Internet. Now I was thinking about saying something like, “this doesn’t mean it is any better than the next guys, it is just my view …” But I am not because my view is a bit more enlightened than most. I have more experience with a wider range than most people. I have been programming Flash since 1999 and have experience with Flash 3 through Flash CS4 AS3. I worked diligently to ensure that our component of Disney Online looked the same on Netscape 4x as it did with IE 4. It was 2004 before Disney Online permanently banished the 4x browsers. Due to Netscape’s poor successor to its 4x browser and its pacular skip to Netscape 6.

I worked to retire detect.dll a proto web service before web services were defined. I worked even harder to dispel the myth about “magic” components that go inside the computer and get the “real” information about what the computer was. The transition to Flash 4 to 5 was painfully slow because people believed that this DLL running on a web server was better than JavaScript. When I learned about headers and packet sniffers I was able to convince the director of engineering that detect dll looked at the user agent and based upon a yes no question put out code to determine if it has Flash or not. This was communicated to the browser via JavaScript.

I had to explain to the staff engineer the difference between JavaScript and JScript. The differences was as subtle as window.document.boo and document.boo. The same differences that separated  IE and Netscape

I saw annoying differences that had to be filtered through if then statements as I was trying to push for integrating new features for newer browsers while maintaining the same Disney experience one would expect from a 2004 disney.go.com/today/index.html

This is the Internet I see. Not the Internet I read about or an Internet explained to me by a smarter co-worker. The browser war of today is not the browser war of 2004. I isn’t about who got online first, but about who has done the most while online. Only a handful of people have been in meetings with marketing, VPs, developers, and engineers.

There is an inherint dager to the Internet. It amplifies group think to unimaginable lengths. Take Hulu for example. I see executives scrambling to make sense of this technology while completely ignoring all the lessons learned in the past. It goes like this.

Prime Time shows this time last year were broadcast FREE. Hulu is a logical place to view Lost. This is where the greatest concern of the big ugly revenue gobbler is. Now due to the poor management of the Entertainment industry I did not know when Community was on. Is saw some commercials for it, looked funny, and I missed it. The permire of Office too. I was relived to find them on Hulu. I might have paid for the Office but not Community. I had all the seasons of the Office and really wanted to see it. Community, I was on the fence for and $1.99 for standard def on Amazon. Really wouldn’t do it for me. I would not have had the patience to hunt down and install plug-ins to view it on NBC’s site (granted this can be interchanged to annoying ABC NBC FOX players) So I am waiting for episode 2.

I remember when the Microsoft pitchman came to talk to us about .NET. Enthusiastic about it, we had nothing to build on, no compilers, and no intrest. That really never stoped us though. We were always building our skill set, using what was new to see if we can use it to improve our work and then see if we can get management to buy into it.