Learning from history

I haven't bought a Blue-Ray player yet. Yes, they are now under $200. Yes, I have a TV that can display the picture nicely.

But I remember the introduction of the CD. People spent oodles and oodles, not just on the player, but on the media -- often on the very same recordings they already had. And a few years later, the $40 CDs were $25, and a few years after that, nobody would pay more than $20 for any CD unless it came in a special flashing box.

And I remember the introduction of the DVD. Same story... plus the fact that nothing really goes out of print for modern digital media, so the gotta-have-it rare discs became giveaways just a little while later.

Now Blue-Ray discs are here, and they cost $40 or $50 apiece. No thanks. The improvement in video quality isn't that dramatic; my MythTV does an excellent job scaling 720x480 to 1920x1080. There's no improvement in audio quality. And I am convinced that, should it take off, decent players will be $100 (and WalMart will have a not-so-decent player for $35) and discs will be $12-20. Just wait a little bit.

Learning from history

I haven't bought a Blue-Ray player yet. Yes, they are now under $200. Yes, I have a TV that can display the picture nicely.

But I remember the introduction of the CD. People spent oodles and oodles, not just on the player, but on the media -- often on the very same recordings they already had. And a few years later, the $40 CDs were $25, and a few years after that, nobody would pay more than $20 for any CD unless it came in a special flashing box.

And I remember the introduction of the DVD. Same story... plus the fact that nothing really goes out of print for modern digital media, so the gotta-have-it rare discs became giveaways just a little while later.

Now Blue-Ray discs are here, and they cost $40 or $50 apiece. No thanks. The improvement in video quality isn't that dramatic; my MythTV does an excellent job scaling 720x480 to 1920x1080. There's no improvement in audio quality. And I am convinced that, should it take off, decent players will be $100 (and WalMart will have a not-so-decent player for $35) and discs will be $12-20. Just wait a little bit.

Oracle lives in an alternate universe

(That would be Oracle the giant database company.)

Oracle decided that I was a good target for their Oracle Advanced Security product, which is an expensive add-on for their expensive database. (Suddenly I'm reminded of my last post -- because the marginal cost of software is zero, features which are invented as extra-cost additions become integrated for free in the next version.)

Advanced Security boasts these exciting features:

• network encryption
  
• encrypted backups and exports
  
• built-in encryption key management with support for hardware security modules
  

Network encryption protects your data as it flows through open, unsecured networks, from database to client server. In my universe, we don't allow database connections from machines that aren't on the same, trusted network as the server.

In my universe, we already encrypt our backups, using PGP or GPG.

Encryption key management is only useful if you are allowing semi-trusted machines to access your database. In my universe, we don't allow semi-trusted machines to connect to our database. Only trusted application servers connect directly. Users connect to the application servers, and hopefully the application is well-enough written to not offer any direct access to the database.

Oracle lives in an alternate universe

(That would be Oracle the giant database company.)

Oracle decided that I was a good target for their Oracle Advanced Security product, which is an expensive add-on for their expensive database. (Suddenly I'm reminded of my last post -- because the marginal cost of software is zero, features which are invented as extra-cost additions become integrated for free in the next version.)

Advanced Security boasts these exciting features:

• network encryption
  
• encrypted backups and exports
  
• built-in encryption key management with support for hardware security modules
  

Network encryption protects your data as it flows through open, unsecured networks, from database to client server. In my universe, we don't allow database connections from machines that aren't on the same, trusted network as the server.

In my universe, we already encrypt our backups, using PGP or GPG.

Encryption key management is only useful if you are allowing semi-trusted machines to access your database. In my universe, we don't allow semi-trusted machines to connect to our database. Only trusted application servers connect directly. Users connect to the application servers, and hopefully the application is well-enough written to not offer any direct access to the database.