4 ms·
Technology is the problem is a common view in the public consciousness. When I took a film exhibition class and we had a class on showing older films, I was su
by vegetablepotpie 5y ago
Technology is the problem is a common view in the public consciousness.
When I took a film exhibition class and we had a class on showing older films, I was surprised to hear that old analog 35mm film was considered the gold standard of archival formats for film preservationists.
The reason why digital formats, formats where the data is not liable to degrade over time, are not considered better is because “the formats keep changing”.
Of course you can encode your media in a lossless format, carefully choose open formats over bespoke proprietary formats, transcode as needed for the latest codecs, and if all else fails, play it in an emulator, which can run the proprietary codec.
Most people in the public, artistic professionals, and the journalists, are at the application level. They want to plug something in and have it just work. If you say you have to put thought into how you do something, it’s equivalent to saying it’s too hard and you basically can’t do it.
Besides, why should they hire you and me to play this media? They basically didn’t have this problem for decades with film/video. Then we, as technologists, come in with new wiz-bang toys that break compatibility every few years. If they’re being uncharitable, they see us as coming in with solutions to problems our industry imposed on them. I can see how technology could even be seen as racketeering. For journalists, technology has been bad for the business model and imposes new costs. Not a great look.
- jakub_g 5y agoYou're right to some extent but it's worth noting that Flash wasn't killed on a whim. It was the no. 1 vector for catching malware by browsing internet -- for over a decade, and at some point it became clear that trying to keep it patched is hopeless long-term because zero-day bugs kept coming. It was like nicely looking box that emits radioactive waste.
- hulitu 5y agoJavascript was the nr 1 vector for malware but everybody seems to be happy to run it.
- Jasper_ 5y agoI mean, that's just a side effect of being popular. In the 2000s, Windows was the no. 1 vector, which Apple kept riding the coattails of with their "no viruses" slogan until macOS became popular enough to be targetable and they had to eat crow. Right now, if you give me a random device, chances are the way I'll jailbreak it is through the random fork of WebKit installed on it. Everything with mass distribution eventually becomes the vector.
- throw0101a 5y ago> The reason why digital formats, formats where the data is not liable to degrade over time, are not considered better is because “the formats keep changing”. DDS-1/2/3/4. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Data_Storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Data_Storage LTO-6, LTO-7, LTO-8, LTO-9. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open H.263, H.264, H.265, AV1. What's next?
- hulitu 5y agoObviously DDS-5, LTO-10, H.266 and AV2.
- chrismcb 5y agoThis is a good point... But I'm pretty sure this stuff was not filmed in flash.