The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Striking an arms deal with a bunch of Sunnis that have a dispute with another bunch of Shias just because you have a chronic problem with a Shia nation-state is not going to help. 

I voted to leave the EU, Not for Theresa May

My opinion of Theresa May was not that high when she was Home Secretary under David Cameron. Her stance on surveillance was ill-informed and in my opinion not practical. The so-called "Snoopers Charter" was opposed by both David Davis and now Nick Cleg.

I posted extensively on this subject at the time way before the referendum and now this pointless General Election. 

The money won't run out

... but life may!

Now a second friend has passed in the last wee while, one has to contemplate ones mortality. 

Using my real name

I have never used my real name in relation to anything that I have publically posted to the Internet. When I originally registered my website domain name I briefly used my real name but I changed it to John Smith when I was trying to remain anonymous in some of my posts.

When  I returned to the UK I changed the name on my Canadian domain registration to my real name. This was due to the fact that a certain person could not have any influence on my personal activity in Canada. Now, in the UK, nobody I know here has any idea of my Internet activity. In  which case there is no reason for me to use a pseudonym for my identity online.  

It looks like get_iplayer's time has come

I can't say that I am surprised and that it is amazing that it has continued to work for as long as it has.

Maybe it will resolve the "Failed to download program schedule" Warning as it has in the past, but I am not holding my breath.

As iPlayer is the BBC's flagship streaming and downloading service it is not surprising that it has seen a lot of continuing development over the years that it has been in operation. The development on get_iplayer, however, stopped when  Phil Lewis withdrew his support when he determined that it was a conflict of interest for him with his work with the BBC and the UK broadcast industry. As the original developer of get_iplayer, as he was instrumental in the development of the original iPlayer (I believe), he was privy to its internal workings. Without that "insider" knowledge of the process it was a potential that should a major change be made that the original programme would break irrevocably.

The iPlayer/get_iplayer process is multi-facetted in that it not only consists of the processing of the streamed data (this I believe has remained much the same) but the location of the resources used by the system. It is this location of the streaming resources that has caused get_iplayer to fail in the past. It was not the only reason over the years as there had been some changes regarding the encryption of the streams, but this was all covered under the RTMP/RTMPE schema that iPlayer has used all along. The current problems stem, probably, from the BBC developing its strategy to maximise its use of it server space and to provide new functionality to the iPlayer service itself. For example, there have been many changes that have been made to the availability of program material and the BBC's downloader has been completely revamped since I first looked at it. The changes, I believe, were made to enhance the regular users experience, not to stop the users of get_iplayer.

The result of this is that those that want to continue to download material to keep will now have to use Bittorrent. The irony here is that the UK has pretty much been successful in blocking access to sites such as thepiratebay, with most ISPs (such as BT) restricting access to this and other torrent tracking sites.