The Untouchables

I have not yet seen this Frontline documentary, but it comes highly recommended. The Untouchables attempts to explain why the Wall Street execs who engineered the great financial wreck of 2008 have never been prosecuted. And here it is, in four chapters:

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Thanks to Riverdaughter for pointing this out. Her most recent piece is quite good, quite quotable...

But the pain and the sacrifice that we have had to endure for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the houses that were lost, the careers that have been blighted either at the beginning or the middle, the harshness of the society that we now live in, all that has lead to an America that is vastly different now than it was four years ago. This America has lost its shine. It’s living with what will soon be third world infrastructure. We have given exploitation and extraction of wealth of average Americans the official stamp of approval. We will now be guests at major scientific projects around the world instead of leaders. We have trashed our educational system by making it almost impossible for some of our most talented students to be able to afford it and we have jeopardized our public health system by making research a private endeavor optimized for maximum profit. Four years ago, there was a golden opportunity to set things right and it was lost.

"Comes the time, comes the man" -- or so we were told. We were told wrong. I want to believe that Obama will become the man we need for the time to come, but I doubt it.

Update: Well, I tried to watch this documentary. Got about twenty minutes into it. The production itself is quite good, but the process of watching is simply too annoying -- the video shutters and stops every two minutes. Two minutes on; two minutes off.

Even though we're paying quite a lot of money each month for what is supposed to be a robust broadband account, we can't watch streaming video in this household -- not these days. Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert, which we used to enjoy every night, have become impossible. Hulu is also too infuriating to use.

A little research reveals that many others are having the same difficulties.

Not too long ago, we would simply pause the programs and allow them to buffer. I don't mind letting the thing buffer for quite a long time, if, at the end, I can watch the show uninterrupted. But for some reason, new video streaming programs won't allow buffering. In the case of this Frontline documentary, I left the computer for twenty minutes while the show buffered. When I came back, the video was unplayable and I had to reload the page.

This problem now exists even on YouTube.

If you know someone who writes the code for streaming video apps, please ask that person a simple question: WHY CAN'T WE BUFFER THE ENTIRE VIDEO?

And some people wonder why folks download torrents. I would be overjoyed to watch television programs via official channels, commercials and all -- IF THE VIDEOS WOULD BUFFER.

I'm not going to discuss the broadband service we use; that's nunnayer business. I have checked and I know that I am not being throttled. The problem is with NOT my broadband provider or this computer. The problem is with the way these streaming video apps are written. People who make a living via streaming video have got to find ways to make the services work as they ought.