Re: [backstage] A couple of things including Arrington
On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 03:02:21PM -, Andrew Bowden wrote: Richard Hyett wrote: He raises perhaps inadvertantly the old point about why we haven't done many good 'Situation Comedies recently and when we do why they only run for a fairly limited series. You can't imagine Friends or Cheers or MASH closing after two series. But Two series and out is a very UK way of working. Life on Mars being a recent example. Unlike, say, top US programme Arrested Development. Which was three series then out. How dare Fox screw up everything for the Arrested Development viewers like that! It's an outrage! GARGH! It is often worse than that. Look at Firefly - shown out of order and pulled from air before they had shown all the episodes of that series (11 out of 14 broadcast). That was Fox, again. That is something I can hardly imagine the BBC (or for that matter commercial TV in Britain) doing to a new drama series they were showing. Looking at say _Life On Mars_, a critical and popular success, I cannot see the BBC phoning up Kudos and saying thanks but no more please. If the writers feel they have told the story they want to tell why drag things out for a few more years. I can think of shows that carried on milking the cow long after it had died (both US and British) and I don't think that is something that I want to see as a matter of course. I think that most of the problem comes down to a massive disconnect in culture. We don't do stuff like the Americans. The Americans don't do stuff like us. This isn't bad or wrong - just different. Both cultures have their advantages, both TV cultures produce their hit programmes. It is perhaps unfortunate that Arrington commented so strongly without knowing too much about the cultural values in British broadcasting and in particular the BBC. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ad Blocking (was: HD-DVD how DRM was defeated)
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 08:45:37PM +, James Cridland wrote: On 2/26/07, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Probably even worse. Your hurting the website even more - lowering the CTR [1] by registering an impression, yet user has no opportunity to click. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_Through_Rate Depends if you ever click ads... Doesn't. Depends whether the ad is good enough for you to click on. Not seen one yet - doubt I ever will. There is a value to the brand owner for you to see the ad even if you don't click on them. And how do you know whether the media owner has a CPM or CPC deal for this particular ad anyway? As a consumer of the content on the website I don't care whether the media owner has a CPM or CPC deal. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Flash required?
On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 10:32:04PM +, Andy wrote: On 04/03/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Switch to Ruby on Rails and AJAX over and above Java? Ruby is server side, unless I am mistaken. Thus would not need to be installed locally, so a good thing there. Javascript (needed for AJAX) is implemented differently across browser. not even sure the XMLHTTPRequest function, or whatever it is called, is standardised or if websites just pray all vendors implemented it the same way. Javascript is pretty standard. XMLHTTPRequest is implemented slightly different across platforms however it is pretty easy to write code that wraps around the particular implementation for all the major browsers. I suggested Java over HTML/CSS/Javascript as Java is more versatile. Java will also run on many more platforms than Flash. You can even get embedded versions of Java. Java is a more full featured language than javascript, or I might just not know Javascript well enough. I've written Java on server, client and mobile. CDLC (the form of Java on mobile phones) is pretty cut down compared to JavaSE - the UI layer is completely different for example. Also I am not sure how good the phone browsers (or even Pocket IE on WindowsCE PDAs) are at running java applets. Javascript as a language is perfectly capable (although prototype based languages have typically been less well-understood). Some of its poor reputation comes down to poor implementation of the DOM and not the language at all. Also it doesn't have a wide range of general purpose libraries (IO and UI in particular) because it was designed to work wihtin a hosted environment. At the moment for most things my choice would tend to JS/CSS/HTML for portability. However I do appreciate that it can be a more tricky proposal to develop to that and likely to take a little longer than Flash. Personally I'm looking forward to a time when all desktop browsers have SVG/SMIL/XForms/XHTML/CSS3. And of course security wise Flash is a no go area. If you can't see what code is doing to your machine better assume its doing something bad to it. Of course I could run flash in a VM Technically the Flash Player is already a VM. If you want real issues with Adobe Flash the following are better issues - far more optimisation for the Windows platform. Solaris is still languishing on Flash 7. No 64bit version. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Flash required?
On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 11:06:17AM +, blogHUD wrote: Trouble is, there aren't enough developers there at the beeb (in News, at least) who can do all these things - along with all the other great stuff they have to do. There are some amazing developers there - don't get me wrong - some are geniuses - some are not anything close. Some are great at Java, some are Flash ninjas, some do great html. Some do what they're told. Some push the boundaries. Some 'watch the clock'. Some work as long as it takes to get a job done because they love it! ;) Some do that little bit 'extra'. Pretty much like any other company. If there aren't enough developers with the requisite skills that is a problem for either recruitment and/or training. What can happen in editorially-driven sites like this is, when a producer/editor wants a certain 'feature', a representative of the design/dev team might a) say 'No! We can't do that!' then hopefully b) Come up with a solution / compromise which might be down to skillsets required and resources available. Policy of what is sensible to implement as Ajax, Java or Flash should come from the technical management, and then that policy should be followed through. At the moment your description sounds a bit like a case of Oh Fred is free but he can only do Flash is one of the main deciding factors on what technology gets used. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Flash required?
On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 11:08:06AM +, Andy wrote: On 06/03/07, Andrew Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And that's before you've got an operating system installed - even Linux isn't without its legalities (GPL etal) GPL only applies if I copy the software. It is not a EULA, it is not a contract it merely waives certain copyrights. (IANAL) (A good job too). GPL does NOT waive any part of copyright. Copyright law still applies in its entirety. What GPL does is give you a licence (permission in everyday English) to make copies of the program, make changes to the source code and distribute the original and your changed version as long as you follow certain rules. And how do you know I haven't written my own operating system? Because you are running a debian based linux (according to your headers). Of course I use Ogg here as an example, any other free and open format is fine by me. As long as it is also sent via a standardised protocol. RTSP is pretty standard, is document, and has open source implementations. So far it looks to me like the BBC is intentionally trying to influence the software market to the detriment of the public. I hope I am wrong. So if you could explain _why_ the BBC is incapable of providing a stream in a free format it would be a start. A think a lot of the problem is historical. When first used there wasn't the choice we have today. I would imagine it would be quite a hard sell to get the suits to agree to replace RealAudio with OGG. That isn't to say someone shouldn't be doing it - for the reasons David Woodhouse mentions. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
WEB API (was Re: [backstage] Noise and Signal)
On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 07:14:58PM -, Ian Forrester wrote: So I would like to remind people that the Backstage list is still a good place to talk shop about the industry, trends, the bbc and technologies. But were also a place for development and trying out some of the things discussed. Fair enough I've got some issues that could be kicked around a bit I'm currently messing about trying to do a simple web page that produces a list of books (actually all linked through to LibraryThing) featured on Book At Bedtime, Book Of The Week, Book Talk, and A Good Read. There is no semantic markup on the first three to identify the title of the book, although for Book At Bedtime the title is often the first sentence of the synopsis. For A Good Read there is nothing in the synopsis at all listing the books covered in that programme. There is a list of past (inc. the current programme) books chosen on the A Good Read micro-site - but again without any sort of markup. Would it be too difficult for someone to use something like span class=booktitleThe Rider/span by span class=authorTim Krabbe/span I could try and scrape what is there at the moment, I suppose, but it doesn't include the next programme, and is bound to have me tearing my hair out. Is there any easier way to get at this data? I know that some (many? all?) of the Radio 4 micro-sites are being rewritten. Hopefully they will follow the lead of the main bbc.co.uk homepage in having clean html which doesn't use tables for layout, but can I also beg for more semantic style markup by using class names? It would also be nice if I could somehow get at the data by using the Web API as well. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC Archive trial
On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 05:44:50PM +0100, Gary Kirk wrote: I just received an e-mail which seemed to confirm I was part of the trial - excerpt: We'll e-mail you your account details in just a few weeks and then you'll have access to hundreds of hours of programmes. So did I. Well I got it twice to be precise - sent date within 6 minutes of each other. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] DRM does not work... what next?
On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 09:38:16AM +0100, Andrew Bowden wrote: Music: Charge for Live performances/concerts Charge for physical merchandise Musical revenues are not something I know huge amounts, but this seems to me to be a model which drives the musicians very very hard. To earn money to live they have to perform - and they'll need to do it a LOT. But to prepare their next album, they'll need to stop performing because they'll need to write their album. And is there not a finite amount of gigs people will attend? The number of people who go to a gig a week isn't that high. Where does this model leave people like Kate Bush - internationally regarded and loved, but who hates doing live performances, so doesn't. But aren't you just looking at the top end of musicians? Even for recording musicians quite a number of them aren't making much (or indeed any) money on their recordings. Artists could also sell recordings themselves presumably signed although this will probably not add much to the value long-term. We could completely go over to a gift culture - there would still be plenty of people who would like to reward artists. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] DRM does not work... what next?
On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 05:49:10PM +0100, Andy wrote: don't know about and aren't complete yet. Running on x86, intel/AMD 64 bit, PowerPC, Motorola 68k, Sparcs, Alpha, Arm, MIPS, PA-RISC, s/390, and CPU architectures that are unknown to the BBC or incomplete. Steady on - why not Z80, OK a bit limited but the Z8 was 32bit and about the same time as some of those above? Basically some of the listed processors above are dead for general-purpose computing in the home and they are used by a dwindling core of hobbyists (and usually not as their main machine). So when is the BBC going to comply with platform neutral? Or does it intend never to comply? What method of complying is it using (seems it should have started by now)? Is it going to be a specification like an RFC or is it going to be an open implementation which will serve as a specification for interaction? I don't see any other way to achieve platform neutral, any one else got any idea how else platform neutral is going to be achieved? For the benefit of those who do not understand why I am stressing the term platform neutral so hard, it is because the BBC Trust explicitly specified the BBC must provide a platform neutral solution. It depends what you mean by platform neutral? Platform neutral means to me software that is independent of any particular feature or any software particular to one platform. Of course any widely used end-user platform must be supported. But at the moment that seems to be restricted to three operating systems on four processor families. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] www.FreeTheBBC.info
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 07:31:03PM +0100, vijay chopra wrote: On 19/06/07, David Greaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: vijay chopra wrote: On 19/06/07, *David Woodhouse* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: legal ways. The only thing I have downloaded unlawfully is an out of print RPG book, that I would be happy to pay for, if only I could find someone selling it! If the book is ever republished (or if I see it second hand etc.), I'll buy it, however it's unusual for companies who write RPGs to republish old editions; they like being able to charge their player base over and over, so keep changing the rules. What RPG is it for? What book? A lot of the old stuff is being republished as PDFs. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Links to video/audio for specific shows
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 10:38:41AM +0100, Chris Sizemore wrote: yes, i agree that TV-Anytime supplies some of the requirement (indeed, perhaps everything brian was suggesting... brian?) but does TVA, despite the URN (the crid, i.e. crid://my.id.creator/xxx88r; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crid), supply the on the Web part? depending on one's philosophical bent, that's one of the potential problems with URNs thus CRIDs: they can't (easily) be dereferenced, in the way that a regular old URL can be... URNs aren't on the Web... i guess what i'm saying is that the regular old URL for a programme Episode should be just as permanent as the TVA CRID -- I think that absolutely there ought to be a persistent and hackable URL. Hackable in the sense that Jakob Nielsen uses it (it is one of the points I happen to agree with him on). This indicates that it is also meaningful to a human and relatively short. and because it's permanent AND on the Web, the regular old URL is even more useful than the CRID. For people with web browsers (or other tech that operates via HTTP). -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] More iPlayer protesting
On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 04:26:21AM +0100, Christopher Woods wrote: The quality was abysmal though, and RealVideo? Urgh. The simile employed in the DbD article is a little inaccurate, the more I think about it; the BBC's choice of MS-based systems for its iPlayer platform is more like their choice to broadcast in PAL - more or less an international industry standard, Not really. Any company could make TVs that implemented the PAL standard. With the iPlayer they are tying themselves to one particular company's product. But it isn't just that which is a problem - by tying themselves to a single OS they may well distort the market in computer OSes themselves. Having Windows installed on most of the computers around the world makes it a good starting point for common ground, Well firstly the BBC should be considering the market in the UK not computers around the world. iPlayer is a domestic product AFAIK. Secondly, on launch it seems that the iPlayer does not work for Vista. Microsoft's latest and greatest version of Windows. Many of the people with new computers aren't able to use iPlayer at the moment. Yes, I know this is going to be fixed, but it does give rise to what does happen when MS upgrades Windows. Will similar periods of not-working occur? Thirdly, the above shows no foresight at all. What about a few years time when you might want your set-top box to interface with the iPlayer server as well as taking the normal OTA transmissions? What about future usage on mobile devices? (EXTREMELY) minority OSes? I mean, come on, hands up who here on the list uses Linux as their primary OS. Me! -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] iPlayer Today?
On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 06:54:49PM +0100, Adam Leach wrote: Andy wrote: On 29/07/07, mike chamberlain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Options 3, Buy an off the shelf solution and use it. Bonus points if the people whose content your licensing are happy with it and will endemnify you against someone cracking it. Yes use an Off the shelf solution, provided it satisfies the criteria Platform Neutral. The BBC's claim We had no choice but to use MS DRM is clearly false as there where 2 perfectly good options. What are these two perfectly good options that could provide the same fuctionality as Microsoft DRM Kontiki. Write a DRM system themselves OR pay someone to write a DRM system. As for alternates to Kontiki then there are plenty of P2P type systems which are more cross-platform without even going to those lengths. Now there may well be good reasons for not writing something yourself or contracting a third party. Namely time to market. However they are valid alternatives. Alternatives the senior management should have considered. That leaves us two versions of what might have occurred. 1) The senior management did not consider these alternatives. Which seems a little short-sighted (and the original Andy would probably say negligent). 2) That time-to-market and maybe cost-issues (although long-term costs would be hard to factor in) were considered far more important than cross-platform issues and the concomitant loss of goodwill. It also seems inevitable that a Kontiki/Microsoft DRM based solution is unlikely to be a valid long-term solution. We have the Mac/Linux issues (I assume Vista can be solved pretty quickly) as well as (at some future date) people wanting to use mobile viewers and off-the-shelf set-top boxes (which usually aren't based off of a Windows code-base). -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] An interview with Mark Taylor, Pres. of UK Open Source Consortium
On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 08:34:05AM +0100, ~:'' wrote: David, my apologies as it seems that once again my comments lack some clarity. where are the easy-to-use tools? Ubuntu and Gnome are hardly mainstream... You seem very confused. Easy to use and aimed at unsophisticated end-users are not synonyms. As far as easy to use I would include many open-source tools - from programming libraries, to languages, to tools, to editors, to operating systems. They meet the needs of their intended users and are no more difficult to use than their commercial counterparts where they exist. Admittedly some of them build on a different paradigm to that which some users who have grown up on Windows are used to but that is yet another issue. As for end-user tools we have Firefox and OpenOffice leading the way. Many people blog on an open-source blogging engine. I know many people from a non-technical background who use Audacity and Scribus. Of course none of these has the market share of the major player that has been established for 15 years or so. However they do have significant market share in their application space which indicates that ease-of-use to end-users isn't that much of an issue. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC tech chief: You Freetards don't matter
On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 06:29:39PM +, vijay chopra wrote: I notice Ashley's misleading people again. From his blog-post: We do maximise the reach of our services by distributing our content via closed or prioprietary networks (Virgin Media, Sky, Tiscali TV/HomeChoice, mobile platforms, etc.) The BBC doesn't distribute programs via Sky, it distributes them via the Astra Satalite using the DRM free DVB-S standard; I don't have to get a sky subscription to view the BBCs digital satalite content, just a satalite dish and a decoder box. Similarly with Virgin Media IIRC the BBC signal can be picked up using any old DVB-C decoder. [snip] Of course, this raises the question, is he misleading deliberately, or just misinformed? Considering his recent faux pas it's not much of a stretch to believe he's not only misinformed, terminally so (I ascribe nothing to malice that can be explained by eveyday incompetence). Whether he is misleading deliberately or just misinformed it does his credibility no good at all. Now I know that a lot of people at his level in many organisations have a shaky grip on the nuts and bolts but even so certain statements really ought to have been given more thought even if the information was from people advising him. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] What would you do? (Was: BBC tech chief: You Freetards don't matter)
On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 11:59:29AM +, Brian Butterworth wrote: On 07/11/2007, George Wright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 06:05:00 +, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Various parts of its non-DRM on demand radio proposals (book readings, classical music) failed the Public Value Test due to the BBC Trust's fears over the negative market impact of non-DRM downloads. Yes, more people would have learnt about classical music and read more books This is something that you should be taking up with the BBC Trust. The BBC *wanted* to deliver books/ classical music, and we weren't allowed to. As with a lot of the other issues mentioned, we are regulated by the Trust. £45 million a year is spent on BBC Radio 3. It seems a poor use of this spending to not allow the classical music to be podcasted, I was shocked when the Trust showed a certain myopia on this front. It's not like any of this music has copyright issues, for a start. There would be performance rights for some of it but it shouldn't be seen as an insurmountable obstacle. Also a fair bit of what Radio 3 broadcasts is still in copyright - again not an insurmountable obstacle. For BBC Orchestra performances of pre-20th century works I see no reason whatsoever why they shouldn't be podcast. They are available on CD and presumably as a paid MP3 download as well. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC Podcasts Including Music
On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 04:30:46PM +, Dave Crossland wrote: On 19/11/2007, Brian Butterworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dave, If the BBC podcasts are first prepared as PCM-encoded WAV files before being translated to the site, providing OggVobis version shouldn't be a problem, surely? The technical problems around providing OggVorbis version are the same as those for providing MP3 versions - ie, little effort to do so - as far as I understand it. (Might be wrong) The problem is social, not technical, though - that is to say, the problem is that the BBC believes software freedom is unimportant. Well the trialed OGG streaming some five years ago. The result was there was an announcement that the BBC decided not to pursue further development and testing. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Adobe fuses on and offline worlds
On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 04:30:35PM +, Dave Crossland wrote: On 29/02/2008, Matt Barber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course the BBC has a duty to educate. The use of proprietary protocols/formats is a direct contradiction to this duty. How can we educate people when we can not even tell them how things work. I can see where your coming from in regard to the software that runs the platforms to deliver content - but aren't we overlooking another function of the BBC here, and that's to educate everyone, not just the guys (and girls) that like to look at the code and generate the apps. It's also important to consider everyone who just likes to turn on their TV and watch something, and go on the news website and check out the top stories. I'm not saying it's bad or good to use open-source - I like the idea of open and free software, but sometimes non-free software can do a great job too. I'm sorry I didnt make this point clearer: Im not saying the BBC ought to require everyone to use GNU+Linux and a free software BIOS :) Im saying that the BBC ought to provide access to people using Windows - which does a great job, right? ;-) - But not in a way that REQUIRES Vista, and excludes GNU+Linux users. And not just because it excludes GNU/Linux users but it will also make life harder for them when it comes to new platforms such as mobiles etc. Hopefully the success of laptops such as the Asus EEE (and maybe Elonex ONE) should give a sizeable, measurable and visible Linux segment of the market by the end of the year and make it more difficult to go with one size fits all solutions. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Web Semantics - Slicing The Cake
On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 01:57:28PM +0100, A Agutter Pineapple Blue wrote: Fearghas has pointed out a valid issue and before I wrote my comments, I knew the Mobile factor would come into the equation. The Mobile platform after careful research and with comments emerging from W3C is to conclude that the Mobile environment is a completely different standard and services need to be developed, solely dedicated for Mobile user audience. The factors steam from not only delivery using and authoring in wml as opposed to Xhtml, Html etc, but in respect of revenue streams from advertiser agency programmes and scripting. Really? I assume that Fearghas was talking about stuff like the Asus EEE (and the new Elonex One) rather than mobile phone like content. The EEE/Elonex/Cloudbook group of machines have fully functional OSes and fully functional browsers. They are far more like a PC than a mobile phone. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Ashley Highfield leaves BBC (almost)
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 10:58:49AM +0100, Tim Duckett wrote: But hold on - you're confusing two issues here. Erik Huggers no longer work for Microsoft - he works for the BBC. So either we say that working for Microsoft at some point in his past has made him fundamentally untrustworthy for all time, and therefore unqualified to make these kind of decisions for another organisation in the future; OR we take the view that he will work on behalf of the organisation that he's being paid by, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Promoting closed formats in the face of all the arguments was doing the right thing as far as Microsoft was concerned - so if he's got a track record of doing the right thing by his employer, it's reasonable to assume that he's going to try to do the right thing for the BBC - whatever that happens to be. I have noticed that a number of people (and not just people associated with Microsoft) do sometimes tend to pick solutions with which they are somewhat familiar. I have coped with projects where that has happened on more than one occasion. Nothing sinister, just that they think they are doing the right thing due to a disparity in their level of knowledge between competing solutions. That isn't to say that Huggers (or anyone else) will do that but it does require careful thought when bringing in someone who might have such an inbuilt preference. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] BBC Look East HTML rich newsletter
On Thu, Jun 05, 2008 at 08:33:27AM +0100, Adam Hatia wrote: Brian, For example, you can't use the class operator to format items. I have used this rather basic function to translate my class items to the more basic style items: Actually, CSS stylesheets are fully supported by Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird at least, and I am using CSS to generate size-efficient HTML emails that use the stylesheets from the website (though obviously, the path to the css file needs to be a full absolute URL) - do you still have an email client that doesn't support CSS, if so, what is it? As I read email using mutt on Linux it doesn't even support html let alone css. -- Andy Leighton = [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] The Final Digital Britain report
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:28:54PM +0100, Brian Butterworth wrote: East Midlands Counties (Notts/Derbys/Lincs/Northamptons/Leictersh/Rutland) Norfolk and Suffolk Cambridge and Bedford Whilst a more local news service is the solution I think that some of your breakdowns will need more thought. I live in Peterborough and the sensible area for news would probably go down to Huntingdon, March and Chatteris in the south, up to past Spalding in the North, out to past Wisbech in the east, and west as far as Oakham and past Oundle. Ideally a local news service should cover that area - I shouldn't have to switch between the three local stations you've suggested (and I've quoted) to get the right coverage of things going on in my area. So what is needed is indeed a number or news stations, but also have the areas overlap and a culture and process of local stations sharing news gathering, and even VT packages, with neighbouring news stations. There should be no need for Norfolk/Suffolk to go out and film an interview at the western edge of their area, and then the next day for a Cambridgeshire station to go and repeat the interview because it is at the eastern edge of their area. -- Andy Leighton = an...@azaal.plus.com The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
