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Friday, 24 March 2006
Team Bore-land attacks
Juha Saarinen, Auckland
Top Stories
- Team Bore-land attacks
- TVNZ vs. Telecom, part II
- Converge that Telecom Freedom
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Team Bore-land attacks
Reader feedback on stories is extremely valuable because it helps us do better even if the correspondent disagrees with the writer. We try to respond to everyone who contacts us, even the occasional flamer who takes a rather myopic view of the topic at hand and goes off on one of the usual “the media are all idiots/corrupt/evil stunted gnomes with six toes on each foot and hidden agendas” rants.
Every now and then though, a particularly tenacious troll comes along and attaches himself (yes, this is a males-only sport for some reason) firmly to one’s leg. It happened this week to Our Beloved Editor Paul, when he ran a story by a different Paul (Krill) about Borland.
It isn’t a very interesting story really. Borland’s veep of product marketing and strategy was interviewed, explaining how the company is committed to developers using its products, and how it’s focused on adding value for the coders. How does Borland propose to do that? Well, by selling off the tools that the developers use of course.
That process going forward through board-level commitment to synergistic asset acquisition has led to over ten entities expressing interest but nobody wants to buy the stuff. In other words, there are no interested buyers. So, that is what the story said and it enraged Nick Hodges of St Paul, Minnesota. (Three Pauls in one story? Creepy.)
As a firm believer in civil and reasoned discourse, Nick immediately slammed OBEP for his “irresponsible subhead” for the story, proclaiming it as “totally false” and demanding its “immediate removal” followed by an “obvious correction”.
Despite attempts at explaining to Nick what the story was actually about, it was all downhill from there. Common ground was not found, so Nick took it upon himself to publish the lengthy email exchange between himself and an increasingly frustrated OBEP on his blog. Read and weep below, if you can be bothered. Unfortunately for Nick, steadfastly assured that he is correct on every single point, not all readers of his blog agree with him. Which is fine irony really; somebody should lend Nick a pair of binoculars so that he too could see it.
- Borland: No buyer for tools line yet
- Confessions of a Delphi bigot: Nick’s Delphi Blog – Bad tech writing
- Nick's Delphi Blog - More on that Headline
TVNZ vs. Telecom, part II
Last week I mentioned that high-bitrate live video streamed from TVNZ overwhelmed Telecom’s OneOffice network during the ASB Tennis. Because of that, I was told that Telecom asked TVNZ not to put up 1 and 2Mbit/s streams of the Commonwealth Games. Unfortunately, my usually reliably source wasn’t quite on the mark this time. While Telecom apparently looked a bit pale around the gills when told about the streaming video, they didn’t get a say on whether or not TVNZ should put up high bitrate ones.
The 128kbit/s streams are in fact 256kbit/s ones, despite the URL having the lower figure. It’s just not been changed yet to reflect the higher bitrate.
Also, shortly after the FryUp hit people’s inboxes, it was pointed out to me that there is in fact a 2Mbit/s stream of the Commonwealth Games available. The URL for it is under the Video Help link on TVNZ’s webpage with the live video coverage of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and it’s highly recommended if your broadband connection supports it – and if it has a sufficiently large data cap of course. It looks and sounds great over my wireless connections (Wired Country/Inspire Net and Natcom Airthenet WiMAX), with a 720-by-576 pixel resolution screen and 16-bit stereo audio sampled at 44.1kHz.
As I still have Telecom’s 2Mbps/192kbps Xtra Jetstream DSL, I wanted to check how well it handled the 2Mbit/s stream too. Give them their fair due and all that. But, that plan came to nought because the video is only available to customers of providers who peer at one of the national exchanges, like Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Dunedin. Xtra doesn’t, so no 2Mbit/s stream for its customers.
- TVNZ: 2Mbit/s stream of the Commonwealth Games
(Paste link to 2Mbit/s stream into your media player)
Converge that Telecom Freedom
As an 027 mobile customer (yes, I really like my EV-DO phone, expensive as it is to operate) I was interested to hear about Telecom’s new Freedom plan. It lets you call a nominated 027 phone from your home line for only $10 a month, for up to an hour at the time. And, you can call home from the 027 phone as well, for that tenner a month. As you can add more 027 phones for a further $10/month, the Freedom plan could be a serious money saver.
But wait, it gets better: the ingenious Geekzone crowd has worked out how to “adapt” the Freedom plan to allow free calls to NZ landlines from your 027 mobiles. Well, not quite free, because you need a second line, but if you use VoIP, the cost will be pretty minimal.
I’m definitely signing up for this. Thanks ever so much, Telecom!
- Geekzone: Mauricio Freitas’ blog
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