Fear the Internet Toaster
Comcast bought out my cable provider - AT&T broadband - and a few days
ago decided to roll out their own software for the set-top box. There
are two differences that I've noticed. One, a button for On-Demand
movies that does not work yet ("Coming Soon"), and, more critically,
my Tivo isn't able to change channels to record new shows about half the
time. You would think that the channel-changing API would be something
that could remain unchanged while the rest of the UI got shuffled. But no.
I don't yet understand exactly what people mean when they say loosely
coupled service oriented architectures orchestrated by active
intermediaries (Jon Udell is trying to explain it to me, but I haven't
got it yet), but I think it has something to do with combining
network-aware components via ubiquitous protocols like
HTTP/XML/SOAP/etc. What I haven't heard a good explanation of is how
debugging, monitoring, upgrading and versioning techniques will make
the leap into this brave new world where the code we interoperate with
is outside our control and changing all the time.
I don't think my strategy of crossing my fingers and hoping Comcast
upgrades sometime soon is going to work out for most enterprises.
10:28:05 AM 
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