YouTube: Direct DL Link Generator

[Oddysey]

Siamesecat;

Quote:The K-Lite codec mega-pack can be downloaded from here:
http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm. It contains Real and Quicktime Alternative.
What is getting my goat is that more and more sites are demanding that one use Macromedia, or they won't even let you look at the Flash file. Some are also insisting that IE be used to access the page.

Thanks for the link - I hadn't realized how far out of date my codec pack was.

As for the "insist on IE", that's usually rendered moot with a faked header ID string, ala The JakxPack Spoofer Set. Not always, I admit, but usually.

And the real reason I decided to write this: ".... demanding that one use Macromedia". There it is, folks, in all it's glory. There is only one reason to restrict the user to this player, and that is, all the other alternatives block or otherwise don't use javascript to execute background commands. The Macromedia players are set to not only allow these operations, but to hide them from the user. There's no configuration item to disable them, so one has to rely on his/her outbound firewall to catch these sneak thieves in the night.

Nuts and bolts short of it is; Macromedia told us long ago, somewhere around version 4 or maybe 5, that they were moving to the use of javascript to make their animations run within a variety of browsers. Now I don't know about you (or about hpguru), but when I look in the javascript manual, as written by netscape, and I see "getFile" and "uploadFile", I get the heebie-jeebies. All over the floor. And that's a real mess.

That kind of security leak I don't need. Ever since I learned about that one, I've steered clear of all other players, even the WMP versions after 7.1 - I just can't be sure that they are "clean". With the advent of alternative codecs for older players, though, I can keep up (somewhat) with the latest in, ahem,.... entertainment on the web. Yeah, that's it, entertainment. >:]

And I still say, if you're gonna play an swf file stored on Macromedia's servers (which over 98% of all of them are), then you should be accessing them via an anonymizing system of some sort. They just don't have any business knowing what kinds of "entertainment" I like to watch.

I'm sure most of you have been reading about the latest furor caused by the phone companies giving our calling records to the NSA. Do we really need to voluntarily participate in a similar program when the Justice Dept. or some alphabet-soup agency comes asking for "viewer habits/patterns" from the main "entertainment media" servers?

</soap box>

Thanks for listening, I feel better now.


Oddysey